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OUR -OLD HOME 

A SERIES OF ENGLISH SKETCHES 

BY 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

KATHARINE LEE BATES 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN WELLESLEY COLLEGE 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 






JUL 25 1906 
CI 



Hv 




Copyright, 1906, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



To 

FRANKLIN PIERCE, 

AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED 

THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY 

IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS, 

&fjts Folume is Enscrtfreti 

By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



CONTENTS. 

Consular Experiences I 

Leamington Spa .41 

About Warwick 69 

Recollections of a Gifted Woman 98 

Lichfield and Uttoxeter 133 

Pilgrimage to Old Boston 155 

Near Oxford 187 

Some of the Haunts of Burns . . . .217 

A London Suburb 240 

Up the Thames . . . ... . . 274 

Outside Glimpses of English Poverty . . . 312 

Civic Banquets . . „ . . . . 349 



INTRODUCTION. 

" A more charming, more unpleasant book has 
never been written concerning England than this." 
So opens the review of Our Old Home in the London 
Athenceum (October 3, 1863). The reviewer admits 
the keen observation, the delicate and whimsical 
fancy, the precision of touch that characterize these 
sketches, but resents their " surprising bad temper, 1 ' 
— the author's " morbid and perverse irritability." 
The North American Review, on the other hand, 
blandly states (October, 186^) : "The two properties 
of the work which seem to us the most striking are 
its humor and its kindliness." These two reviews 
are fairly typical of the English versus the American 
reception of the book. 

The displeasure aroused by Our Old Home in 
England was not due to the recorded impressions as 
a whole, but might, it would seem, have been averted 
by crossing out merely a few passages from the 
manuscript. During the five years (July, 1853-June, 
1858) of Hawthorne's tenure of the Liverpool consul- 
ship, an uncongenial, irksome, exasperating office, he 
had whispered to his Note-Books certain things 
which, when shouted upon the house-tops, set the 
chimney-pots vibrating with a clatter that took him 
almost ludicrously by surprise. 



Vlll INTR OD UC TION. 

His chief offence centred in his frankly unchival- 
rous description of the elephantine dowager at Leam- 
ington Spa, laying him open to charges of "ineffable 
coarseness " and of taking " a cannibal view " of that 
revered personage, the British matron. The West- 
minster Review, indeed (January, 1864), was moved 
to deprecate the general outcry, claiming that the 
American author's " criticisms on English women 
have exposed him to unfair, if not malicious retorts," 
and finding it " a little laughable that this single 
point in Mr. Hawthorne's book should have had such 
prominence given to it.' 1 

An imperfect and unfriendly conception of the 
English character is the second count in the indict- 
ment. The Quarterly Review (January, 1864) 
claimed that Hawthorne " only believes in one John 
Bull " and denies genius to any but " sickly or de- 
formed " Englishmen, seeing in Nelson no kinship to 
the race and ignoring such exquisite spirits as Sidney, 
Herbert, Spenser. " He acknowledges only one type, 
and that, to him, a repulsive one." 

Toward the country itself, — climate, landscape, 
architecture, — it was admitted that he took a more 
gracious attitude. " On the whole, we have no 
doubt," concludes the Quarterly Review, " that Mr. 
Hawthorne found England much too good for the 
English." The Spectator (October 3, 1863) gave 
magnanimous praise to his " half-dreamy and half- 
vigilant comments " and even professed to enjoy their 
" flavor of intellectual malice." 

But to England at large, conscious that it had been 



INTR OD UCTION. IX 

prompt to recognize the genius of the hidden Salem 
romancer and had lavished courtesies and hospitalities 
upon the taciturn consul, these pungent comments 
savored of ingratitude. " These volumes, 1 ' said the 
British Quarterly (January, 1864), "contain passages 
which, in literary skill and power, are worthy of the 
reputation of the writer ; but they are disfigured by 
such outbursts of Yankee spleen and coarseness that 
the author is no longer the Nathaniel Hawthorne we 
once knew. From his hands, at least, the 'Old 
Home 1 has deserved another kind of treatment. 11 

Ten of the twelve sketches had already been 
printed in the fall before the publication of the book. 
Consular Experiences was new to the public, and 
Lichfield and Uttoxeter had appeared {Harpers Maga- 
zine, April, 1857) only in part, but the others had 
been made known to readers of the Atlajitic in the 
following sequence : Some of the Haunts of Burns, 
by a Tourist without Imagination or Enthusiasm, 
October, i860; Near Oxford, October, 1861 ; Pil- 
grimage to Old Boston, January, 1862; Leamington 
Spa, October, 1862; Aboid Warwick, December, 
1862; Recollections of a Gifted Womaii, January, 
1863; A London Suburb, March, 1863; Up the 
Thames, May, 1 863 ; Outside Glimpses of English 
Poverty, July, 1863; Civic Banquets, August, 1863. 
The arrangement of these dozen sketches in Our Old 
Home presents, at the outset, the official life at Liver- 
pool ; then the first retreat, often again sought out, at 
Leamington Spa, neighbored by Warwick ; special 
pilgrimages to the shrines of Shakespeare and John- 



X INTRODUCTION. 

son, to Old Boston, Oxford, and the haunts of Burns ; 
and, finally, four chapters of London atmosphere, — 
Greenwich Fair, the Thames, English slums, and the 
Lord Mayor's feast, a sketch whose dramatic close 
leaves the consul in desperate, heroic attitude, upon 
his legs, about to open mouth, in the hush that follows 
the thunder, for an after-dinner speech. 

In mid-autumn of 1863, Our Old Ho?ne : A Series 
of English Sketches was issued in one volume by 
Ticknor and Fields of Boston, with a dedication to 
Franklin Pierce, and simultaneously, in two volumes, 
by the London house of Smith and Elder. In those 
tense war-times, the name of Pierce, here at the North, 
was hardly one to conjure with, and Hawthorne's 
friends feared that the proposed dedication might 
work against the fortunes of his book. But in a sense 
which the author was swift to recognize, this book, 
the fruit of his English residence, belonged to the ex- 
President. In the campaign often years before, when 
General Pierce was the Democratic candidate, Haw- 
thorne, for the sake of a friendship dating from their 
college life at Bowdoin, had written for him a cam- 
paign biography, — a service which was promptly re- 
warded by appointment to the Liverpool consulate, 
then one of the richest offices in the presidential gift. 
So to all remonstrance concerning the inscription of 
Our Old Home, the writer, in a letter to his publisher, 
steadfastly replied : — 

" I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in 
me to withdraw either the dedication or the dedica- 
tory letter. My long and personal relations with 



INTR OD UC TION. XI 

Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, espe- 
cially as regards this book, which would have had no 
existence without his kindness ; and if he is so ex- 
ceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink 
the volume, there is so much the more need that an 
old friend should stand by him. I cannot, merely on 
account of pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go 
back from what I have deliberately felt and thought 
it right to do ; and if I were to tear out the dedica- 
tion, I should never look at the volume again without 
remorse and shame. 1 ' 

The war-cloud, glooming the country to which 
Hawthorne had just returned after seven years of 
absence, rested heavily on his sensitive spirit, and 
during the period in which he was selecting from his 
English journals and re-writing the material for these 
sketches, he could summon no enthusiasm for his 
task. He confessed to "a singular despondency and 
heaviness of heart " as he worked, and had slight 
faith in the value of his performance. " Heaven sees 
fit to visit me, 11 he wrote to Fields, " with an unshak- 
able conviction that all this series of articles is good 
for nothing." The asperity of the English reviews, 
though he would admit no justice in their specific 
charges, increased his distaste for the book. On 
October eighteenth he wrote again : " The English 
critics seem to think me very bitter against their 
countrymen, and it is, perhaps, natural that they 
should, because their self-conceit can accept nothing 
short of indiscriminate adulation ; but I really think 
that Americans have more cause than they to com- 



Xll INTR OD L/C T/OM. 

plain of me. Looking over the volume, I am rather 
surprised to find that whenever I draw a comparison 
between the two people, I almost invariably cast the 
balance against ourselves. It is not a good nor a 
weighty book, nor does it deserve any great amount 
either of praise or censure. I don't care about seeing 
any more notices of it. 11 

Later critics have put a higher estimate than the 
author's on Our Old Howe. Notably Mr. Henry 
James, so acute a judge of the literary art, so cosmo- 
politan in culture, finds the book charming in its very 
lightness, singularly graceful, delicate, felicitous, and 
counts it the best written of all Hawthorne's works. 
Hawthorne's latest biographer, however, Professor 
Woodberry, discerns in these sketches a characteristic 
detachment and lack of sympathy, a chill of mood, a 
rigor of attitude, rather disastrously combined with 
the caustic candor of New England. As was to have 
been expected, Our Old Home has long enjoyed in 
the mother country the battered honors of a guide- 
book and may be picked up for a shilling, a dumpy 
volume in yellow paper covers, on the humblest book- 
stalls of Warwick, Lichfield, and Old Boston. 

Passages from the English Note-Books, edited by 
Mrs. Hawthorne and published in 1870, six years 
after the writer's death, acquaints us with the quarry 
from which these sketches were hewn. The tone of 
the Note-Books is distinctly more genial than that of 
Our Old Home, giving weight to Hawthorne's own 
opinion that the depression of his mood, on his return 
to America, had crept into these revisions of chapters 



INTR OD UC TION. xili 

from his old journals. His choice of material, too, 
was not always of the best. There is nothing in the 
Consular Experiences so memorable as the burial of 
Captain Auld, and the Blenheim of Our Old Home 
is no satisfactory substitute for the Oxford of the 
Note-Books. Out of the fifty pages of day-by-day 
description might have grown, it would seem, an 
especially beautiful and vivid sketch of the Lake 
Country, with swift pictures of water " like a strip and 
gleam of sky, 11 and of mountains shutting in the poefs 
homes " like a neighborhood of kindly giants." Haw- 
thorne's account of the Lakes is brightened, too, by 
some of his most characteristic human touches, as of 
the look of the waiter disappointed in his fee, " not 
disrespectful in the slightest degree, but a look of 
profound surprise, a gaze at the offered coin (which 
he nevertheless pockets) as if he either did not see it, 
or did not know it, or could not believe his eyesight ; 
— all this, however, with the most quiet forbearance, 
a Christian-like non-recognition of an unmerited wrong 
and insult. 11 Hawthorne's full sympathy with the 
poetic associations of the Lake Country would have 
made pleasant reading for the English, no less than his 
delight in the noble scenery, — a delight which, indeed, 
went to such lengths that, by comparison with the 
Cumberland peaks, " a group of huge lions lying down 
with their backs toward each other," our New Eng- 
land hills impressed him as no more picturesque than 
"apple-dumplings in a dish." His reason for not includ- 
ing the Lake Country in his series of sketches may be 
inferred from a jotting made near the end of the trip : — 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

" But, to say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, 
and it seemed to me that I had eaten a score of moun- 
tains, and quaffed many lakes, all in the space of two 
or three days, — and the natural consequence was a 
surfeit. There was scarcely a single place in all our 
tour where I should not have been glad to spend a 
month ; but, by flitting so quickly from one point to 
another, I lost all the more recondite beauties, and 
had come away without retaining even the surface of 
much that I had seen. I am slow to feel, — slow, I 
suppose, to comprehend, and, like the anaconda, I 
need to lubricate any object a great deal before I can 
swallow it and actually make it my own. Yet I shall 
always enjoy having made this journey, and shall 
wonder the more at England, which comprehends so 
much, such a rich variety, within its narrow bounds. 
If England were all the world, it still would have 
been worth while for the Creator to have made it, and 
mankind would have had no cause to find fault with 
their abode ; except that there is not room enough for 
so many as might be happy here.'' 1 

The anaconda comparison goes far toward account- 
ing for those occasional outbursts of fatigue and im- 
patience in Hawthorne's treatment of foreign scenes. 
That lonely, brooding imagination of his, for which 
the merest fragment of life and time, a butterfly, a 
birthmark, a single statue, a shred of old embroidery, 
was nutriment enough, felt itself choked by mass. 
The British Museum was his despair. " It quite 
crushes a person to see so much at once, and I wan- 
dered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart, 



1NTR OD UCTION. XV 

wishing (Heaven forgive me !) that the Elgin marbles 
and the frieze of the Parthenon were all burnt into 
lime, and that the granite Egyptian statues were hewn 
and squared into building-stones, and that the mum- 
mies had all turned to dust two thousand years ago. 1 ' 

The charm of the Note-Books, so far as it depends 
upon the freshness of the impressions, the frank in- 
formality of the tone, is necessarily lost to a certain 
degree in the developed sketches, and yet these have 
not entirely freed themselves from the monotony and 
triviality incident to journals. Those inconsistencies, 
too, which but attest the honesty of the Note-Books, 
are less natural in Our Old Home. That Hawthorne 
should find Oxford, on his first visit, "an ugly old 
town, of crooked and irregular streets, 1 ' and behold it, 
less than three months later, " exceedingly picturesque 
and rich in beauty and grandeur and in antique state- 
liness " has a significance one would not lose, but it is 
more curious that he should have let stand, in the 
final collection, passages of such contradictory mood 
as those in which he benignantly comments on the 
autograph-scribbled walls in the birthplace of Burns 
as due to a general human impulse, and is irritated by 
a similar scrawling of signatures over walls and win- 
dows and ceiling in the birthplace of Shakespeare : 
"Methinks it is strange that people do not strive to 
forget their forlorn little identities, in such situations, 
instead of thrusting them forward into the dazzle of 
a great renown, where, if noticed, they cannot but be 
deemed impertinent." 

It would seem, in short, that the English Note- 



XVI INTR OD UC TION. 

Books furnish foundations for better building than 
that of these twelve somewhat listless and perfunc- 
tory sketches. Yet, after all abatements, Our- Old 
Home has fine and abiding values. 

Hawthorne grew to love the air and soil of his an- 
cestral land so well, England's "veiled sky, and green 
lustre of the lawn and fields,' 1 that he became sensible 
of " an austere friendliness, shy, but sometimes almost 
tender," in the very weather. The rooks, " cawing 
and chattering so high in the tree-tops that their 
voices get musical before reaching the earth," the 
foot-paths " wandering away from stile to stile,' 1 haw- 
thorn hedges, ivied walls, hamlets of thatched cottages, 
lordly parks and dreamy gardens, all were dear to him, 
and dear, even from the first, with some strange spell 
as of long familiarity. The Gothic cathedrals, too, 
uninstructed though he was, this provincial New Eng- 
lander, even in the elements of architectural criticism, 
" conscious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty " 
was pouring down upon him, had their great message 
for sense and soul. Those august temples stood 
apart in his mind, endowed with " a vast, quiet, long- 
enduring life " of their own, but state buildings and 
domestic were replete for him with human associa- 
tions. The Tower, the red-tiled houses of Old Boston, 
" the gray magnificence of Warwick Castle, 1 ' were 
haunted with dim ghosts ; even through the rusty 
open-work of some iron gate keeping guard on peren- 
nial school grounds would gleam "the shy, curious 
eyes of the little boys of past generations, peeping 
forth from their infantile antiquity into the strange- 



INTR OD UCTION. xvil 

ness of our present life." His master-stroke of this 
sort is his description of Leicester's Hospital. About 
ancient edifice and modern plays his whimsical fancy, 
likening the Crystal Palace, "glimmering afar in the 
afternoon sunshine," to a soap-bubble, and venturing 
on a yet more undignified simile for the statues that 
adorn the west facade of Lichfield cathedral. " Being 
much corroded by the moist English atmosphere, dur- 
ing four or five hundred winters that they had stood 
there, these benign and majestic figures perversely 
put me in mind of the appearance of a sugar image, 
after a child has been holding it in his mouth. The 
venerable infant Time has evidently found them sweet 
morsels." The Thames Tunnel set in motion a long 
train of humorous fantasies. 

Hawthorne himself appears in these sketches not 
as a misanthrope nor even as an abstracted recluse, 
but as an active man of affairs, sustaining his due 
part in social intercourse and supremely delighting in 
London, — a man generous to human need and ten- 
der of human infirmity, yet stern enough on occasions, 
ever " turned to flint by the insufferable proximity of 
a fool." His musing on the Greenwich pensioners 
might pass for sentiment, but the consul took into 
earnest consideration the case of the queer old vaga- 
bond longing for Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia, 
and toward that " bewildered enthusiast," Delia Bacon, 
who inspired perhaps the most memorable pages of 
Our Old Home, his bearing was worthy of any knight 
— or saint. Their correspondence, published in 
Theodore Bacon's Biographical Sketch of his kins- 



XV111 INTR OD UC TION. 

woman, shows with what gentleness, wisdom, and for- 
bearance Hawthorne maintained his difficult position 
of friend and adviser to one already on the verge of 
insanity. For an author, style must be the body of 
personality, and the inevitable grace of Hawthorne's 
speech, what he calls, in reference to Leigh Hunt, 
" the inscrutable happiness of his touch," is at its best 
in these leisurely chapters. He may be telling merely 
of a typical English village, whose dwellings " all 
grow together, like the cells of a honeycomb," but the 
phrase abides. Or he may turn from the contempla- 
tion of memorial statues in a cathedral, those of the 
recently dead seeming already as much at home in 
that dim marble realm as the quaint figures of far 
antiquity, to say, in words that fall like the music of 
a voice : " The dying melt into the great multitude of 
the Departed as quietly as a drop of water into the 
ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of no unfamiliar- 
ity with their new circumstances, but immediately be- 
come aware of an insufferable strangeness in the 
world which they have quitted. Death has not taken 
them away, but brought them home." 

Perhaps the two touches in the book which open 
up most deeply the heart of Hawthorne are his feel- 
ingfor the scrofulous foundling of the Liverpool alms- 
house who so confidently claimed his caresses, " as if 
God had promised the poor child this favor," and his 
passionate yearning over the children of the slums. 
" It might almost make a man doubt the existence of 
his own soul, to observe how Nature has flung these 
little wretches into the street and left them there. 



INTR OD UC TION. XIX 

. . . Ah, what a mystery ! Slowly, slowly, as after 
groping at the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant 
pool, my hope struggles upward to the surface, bear- 
ing the half-drowned body of a child along with it, 
and heaving it aloft for its life, and my own life, and 
all our lives. Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can 
be made capable of inhaling celestial air, I know not 
how the purest and most intellectual of us can reason- 
ably expect ever to taste a breath of it. The whole 
question of eternity is staked there. If a single one 
of those helpless little ones be lost, the world is lost." 
Such passages as these must needs persuade us that 
if Our Old Home is not a great book, it is neverthe- 
less the book of a great soul. 

Katharine Lee Bates. 



TO A FRIEND. 



I have not asked your consent, my dear General, 
to the foregoing inscription, because it would have 
been no inconsiderable disappointment to me had you 
withheld it ; for I have long desired to connect your 
name with some book of mine, in commemoration of 
an early friendship that has grown old between two 
individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and fortunes. 
I only wish that the offering were a worthier one than 
this volume of sketches, which certainly are not of a 
kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in re- 
tirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters 
of policy or government, and have very little to say 
about the deeper traits of national character. In their 
humble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic litera- 
ture, and can achieve no higher success than to repre- 
sent to the American reader a few of the external 
aspects of English scenery and life, especially those 
that are touched with the antique charm to which our 
countrymen are more susceptible than are the people 
among whom it is of native growth. 

I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would 
not be all that I might write. These and other 
sketches, with which, in a somewhat rougher form 
than I have given them here, my journal was copi- 
ously filled, were intended for the side-scenes and 
backgrounds and exterior adornment of a work of 



xxii TO A FRIEND. 

fiction of which the plan had imperfectly developed 
itself in my mind, and into which I ambitiously pro- 
posed to convey more of various modes of truth than 
I could have grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I 
should not mention this abortive project, only that 
it has been utterly thrown aside and will never now 
be accomplished. The Present, the Immediate, the 
Actual, has proved too potent for me. It takes away 
not only my scanty faculty, but even my desire for 
imaginative composition, and leaves me sadly content 
to scatter a thousand peaceful fantasies upon the hur- 
ricane that is sweeping us all along with it, possibly, 
into a Limbo where our nation and its polity may be as 
literally the fragments of a shattered dream as my un- 
written Romance. But I have far better hopes for 
our dear country ; and for my individual share of the 
catastrophe, I afflict myself little, or not at all, and 
shall easily find room for the abortive work on a 
certain ideal shelf, where are reposited many other 
shadowy volumes of mine, more in number, and very 
much superior in quality, to those which I have suc- 
ceeded in rendering actual. 

To return to these poor Sketches; some of my 
friends have told me that they evince an asperity of 
sentiment towards the English people which I ought 
not to feel, and which it is highly inexpedient to ex- 
press. The charge surprises me, because, if it be 
true, I have written from a shallower mood than I 
supposed. I seldom came into personal relations 
with an Englishman without beginning to like him, 
and feeling my favorable impression wax stronger 
with the progress of the acquaintance. I never stood 
in an English crowd without being conscious of 
hereditary sympathies. Nevertheless, it is undeni- 



TO A FRIEND. xxni 

able that an American is continually thrown upon his 
national antagonism by some acrid quality in the 
moral atmosphere of England. These people think 
so loftily of themselves, and so contemptuously of 
everybody else, that it requires more generosity than 
I possess to keep always in perfectly good humor 
with them. Jotting down the little acrimonies of the 
moment in my journal, and transferring them thence 
(when they happened to be tolerably well expressed) 
to these pages, it is very possible that I may have 
said things which a profound observer of national 
character would hesitate to sanction, though never 
any, I verily believe, that had not more or less of 
truth. If they be true, there is no reason in the 
world why they should not be said. Not an English- 
man of them all ever spared America for courtesy's 
sake or kindness ; nor, in my opinion, would it con- 
tribute in the least to our mutual advantage and 
comfort if we were to besmear one another all over 
with butter and honey. At any rate, we must not 
judge of an Englishman's susceptibilities by our own, 
which, likewise, I trust, are of a far less sensitive 
texture than formerly. 

And now farewell, my dear friend ; and excuse (if 
you think it needs any excuse) the freedom with 
which I thus publicly assert a personal friendship 
between a private individual and a statesman who 
has filled what was then the most august position in 
the world. But I dedicate my book to the Friend, 
and shall defer a colloquy with the Statesman till 
some calmer and sunnier hour. Only this let me 
say, that, with the record of your life in my memory, 
und with a sense of your character in my deeper 
consciousness as among the few things that time has 



xxiv TO A FRIEND. 

left as it found them, I need no assurance that you 
continue faithful forever to that grand idea of an 
irrevocable Union, which, as you once told me, was 
the earliest that your brave father taught you. For 
other men there may be a choice of paths — for you, 
but one; and it rests among my certainties that no 
man's loyalty is more steadfast, no man's hopes or 
apprehensions on behalf of our national existence 
more deeply heartfelt, or more closely intertwined 
with his possibilities of personal happiness, than those 
of Franklin Pierce. 

The Wayside, 
July 2, 1863. 



OUR OLD HOME. 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

The Consulate of the United States, in my day, was 
located in Washington Buildings, (a shabby and 
smoke-stained edifice of four stories high, thus illus- 
triously named in honor of our national establish- 
ment,) at the lower corner of Brunswick Street, 
contiguous to the Goree Arcade, and in the neighbor- 
hood of some of the oldest docks. This was by no 
means a polite or elegant portion of England's great 
commercial city, nor were the apartments of the 
American official so splendid as to indicate the as- 
sumption of much consular pomp on his part. A 
narrow and ill-lighted staircase gave access to an 
equally narrow and ill-lighted passage-way on the first 
floor, at the extremity of which, surmounting a door- 
frame, appeared an exceedingly stiff pictorial represen- 
tation of the Goose and Gridiron, according to the 
English idea of those ever-to-be-honored symbols. 
The staircase and passage-way were often thronged, 
of a morning, with a set of beggarly and piratical- 
looking scoundrels, (I do no wrong to our own 
countrymen in styling them so, for not one in twenty 
was a genuine American,) purporting to belong to our 
mercantile marine, and chiefly composed of Liverpool 
Blackballers and the scum of every maritime nation 



2 OUR OLD HOME. 

on earth ; such being the seamen by whose assistance 
we then disputed the navigation of the world with 
England. These specimens of a most unfortunate 
class of people were shipwrecked crews in quest of 
bed, board, and clothing, invalids asking permits for 
the hospital, bruised and bloody wretches complain- 
ing of ill-treatment by their officers, drunkards, 
desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly 
intermingled with an uncertain proportion of reason- 
ably honest men. All of them (save here and there 
a poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore- 
going rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had 
sweltered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all 
required consular assistance in one form or another. 

Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his 
mind to elbow a passage among these sea-monsters, 
was admitted into an outer office, where he found 
more of the same species, explaining their respective 
wants or grievances to the Vice-Consul and clerks, 
while their shipmates awaited their turn outside the 
door. Passing through this exterior court, the 
stranger was ushered into an inner privacy, where sat 
the Consul himself, ready to give personal attention 
to such peculiarly difficult and more important cases 
as might demand the exercise of (what we will cour- 
teously suppose to be) his own higher judicial or 
administrative sagacity. 

It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted 
in imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two win- 
dows looking across a by-street at the rough brick- 
side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and 
uglier structure than ever was built in America. On 
the walls of the room hung a large map of the United 
States, (as they were, twenty years ago, but seem 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 3 

little likely to be, twenty years hence,) and a similar 
one of Great Britain, with its territory so provokingly 
compact, that we may expect it to sink sooner than 
sunder. Farther adornments were some rude engrav- 
ings of our naval victories in the war of 1812, together 
with the Tennessee State House, and a Hudson 
River steamer, and a colored, life-size lithograph of 
General Taylor, with an honest hideousness of aspect, 
occupying the place of honor above the mantel-piece. 
On the top of a bookcase stood a fierce and terrible 
bust of General Jackson, pilloried in a military collar 
which rose above his ears, and frowning forth immiti- 
gably at any Englishman who might happen to cross 
the threshold. I am afraid, however, that the trucu- 
lence of the old General's expression was utterly 
thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men ; 
for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work 
of art represented, I was mortified to find that the 
younger ones had never heard of the battle of New 
Orleans, and that their elders had either forgotten it 
altogether, or contrived to misremember, and twist it 
wrong end foremost into something like an English 
victory. They have caught from the old Romans (whom 
they resemble in so many other characteristics) this 
excellent method of keeping the national glory intact 
by sweeping all defeats and humiliations clean out of 
their memory. Nevertheless, my patriotism forbade 
me to take down either the bust or the pictures, both 
because it seemed no more than right that an American 
Consulate (being a little patch of our nationality 
imbedded into the soil and institutions of England) 
should fairly represent the American taste in the fine 
arts, and because these decorations reminded me so de- 
lightfully of an old-fashioned American barber's shop. 



4 OUR OLD HOME. 

One truly English object was a barometer hanging 
on the wall, generally indicating one or another degree 
of disagreeable weather, and so seldom pointing to 
Fair, that I began to consider that portion of its circle 
as made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its 
grate of bituminous coal, was English too, as was also 
the chill temperature that sometimes called for a fire 
at mid-summer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere 
which often, between November and March, com- 
pelled me to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not 
aware of omitting anything important in the above 
descriptive inventory, unless it be some bookshelves 
filled with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, 
and a good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty 
communications from former Secretaries of State, and 
other official documents of similar value, constituting 
part of the archives of the Consulate, which I might 
have done my successor a favor by flinging into the 
coal-grate. Yes ; there was one other article demand- 
ing prominent notice : the consular copy of the New 
Testament, bound in black morocco, and greasy, I 
fear, with a daily succession of perjured kisses ; at 
least, I can hardly hope that all the ten thousand 
oaths, administered by me between two breaths, to 
all sorts of people and on all manner of worldly busi- 
ness, were reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his 
souPs peril. 

Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber 
in which I spent wearily a considerable portion of 
more than four good years of my existence. At first, 
to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it as not 
altogether fit to be tenanted by the commercial repre- 
sentative of so great and prosperous a country as the 
United States then were ; and I should speedily have 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 5 

transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier apart- 
ments, except for the prudent consideration that my 
Government would have left me thus to support its 
dignity at my own personal expense. Besides, a long 
line of distinguished predecessors, of whom the latest 
is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had 
found the locality good enough for them ; it might 
certainly be tolerated, therefore, by an individual so 
little ambitious of external magnificence as myself. 
So I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots 
into such soil as I could find, adapting myself to cir- 
cumstances, and with so much success, that, though 
from first to last I hated the very sight of the little 
room, I should yet have felt a singular kind of reluc- 
tance in changing it for a better. 

Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a 
great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but 
including almost every other nationality on earth, 
especially the distressed and downfallen ones like 
those of Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits (for 
so they looked), proscribed conspirators from Old 
Spain, Spanish Americans, Cubans who professed to 
have stood by Lopez and narrowly escaped his fate, 
scarred French soldiers of the Second Republic, — in 
? word, all sufferers, or pretended ones, in the cause 
of Liberty, all people homeless in the widest sense, 
those who never had a country or had lost it, those 
whom their native land had impatiently flung off for 
planning a better system of things than they were 
born to, — a multitude of these, and, doubtless, an 
equal number of jail-birds, outwardly of the same 
feather, sought the American Consulate, in hopes of 
at least a bit of bread, and, perhaps, to beg a passage 
to the blessed shores of Freedom. In most cases 



6 OUR OLD HOME. 

there was nothing, and in any case distressingly little, 
to be done for them ; neither was I of a proselyting 
disposition, nor desired to make my Consulate a 
nucleus for the vagrant discontents of other lands. 
And yet it was a proud thought, a forcible appeal to 
the sympathies of an American, that these unfortunates 
claimed the privileges of citizenship in our Republic 
on the strength of the very same noble misdemeanors 
that had rendered them outlaws to their native des- 
potisms. So I gave them what small help I could. 
Methinks the true patriots and martyr-spirits of the 
whole world should have been conscious of a pang 
near the heart, when a deadly blow was aimed at the 
vitality of a country which they have felt to be their 
own in the last resort. 

As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted with 
many of our national characteristics during those four 
years than in all my preceding life. Whether brought 
more strikingly out by the contrast with English man- 
ners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra 
peculiarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was 
that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their 
figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chiselled in 
sharper angles than ever I had imagined them to beat 
home. It impressed me with an odd idea of having 
somehow lost the property of my own person, when I 
occasionally heard one of them speaking of me as " my 
Consul!" They often came to the Consulate in 
parties of half a dozen or more, on no business what- 
ever, but merely to subject their public servant to a 
rigid examination, and see how he was getting on with 
his duties. These interviews were rather formidable, 
being characterized by a certain stiffness which I felt 
to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though it 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. J 

looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my 
firm belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing a 
native tendency to organization, generally halted out- 
side of the door to elect a speaker, chairman, or mod- 
erator, and thus approached me with all the formalities 
of a deputation from the American people. After 
salutations on both sides, — abrupt, awful, and severe 
on their part, and deprecatory on mine, — and the 
national ceremony of shaking hands being duly gone 
through with, the interview proceeded by a series of 
calm and well-considered questions or remarks from 
the spokesman, (no other of the guests vouchsafing to 
utter a word,) and diplomatic responses from the Con- 
sul, who sometimes found the investigation a little 
more searching than he liked. I flatter myself, how- 
ever, that, by much practice, I attained considerable 
skill in this kind of intercourse, the art of which lies 
in passing off commonplaces for new and valuable 
truths, and talking trash and emptiness in such a way 
that a pretty acute auditor might mistake it for some- 
thing solid. If there be any better method of dealing 
with such junctures, — when talk is to be created out 
of nothing, and within the scope of several minds at 
once, so that you cannot apply yourself to your 
interlocutor's individuality, — I have not learned it. 

Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the old 
world and the new, where the steamers and packets 
landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen, 
and received them again when their wanderings were 
done, I saw that no people on earth have such vaga- 
bond habits as ourselves. The Continental races 
never travel at all, if they can help it ; nor does an 
Englishman ever think of stirring abroad, unless he 
has the money to spare, or proposes to himself some 



8 OUR OLD HOME. 

definite advantage from the journey ; but it seemed to 
me that nothing was more common than for a young 
American deliberately to spend all his resources in an 
aesthetic peregrination about Europe, returning with 
pockets nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. 
It happened, indeed, much oftener than was at all 
agreeable to myself, that their funds held out just long 
enough to bring them to the door of my Consulate, 
where they entered as if with an undeniable right to 
its shelter and protection, and required at my hands 
to be sent home again. In my first simplicity, — 
finding them gentlemanly in manners, passably edu- 
cated, and only tempted a little beyond their means by 
a laudable desire of improving and refining themselves, 
or, perhaps, for the sake of getting better artistic 
instruction in music, painting, or sculpture, than our 
country could supply, — I sometimes took charge of 
them on my private responsibility, since our Govern- 
ment gives itself no trouble about its stray children, 
except the seafaring class. But, after a few such 
experiments, discovering that none of these estimable 
and ingenuous young men, however trustworthy they 
might appear, ever dreamed of reimbursing the Consul, 
I deemed it expedient to take another course with 
them. Applying myself to some friendly shipmaster, 
I engaged homeward passages on their behalf, with 
the understanding that they were to make themselves 
serviceable on shipboard ; and I remember several 
very pathetic appeals from painters and musicians, 
touching the damage which their artistic fingers were 
likely to incur from handling the ropes. But my 
observation of so many heavier troubles left me very 
little tenderness for their finger-ends. In time, I 
grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 9 

was quite possible to leave a countryman with no 
shelter save an English poor-house, when, as he 
invariably averred, he had only to set foot on his 
native soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was 
my ultimate conclusion, however, that American 
ingenuity may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, 
one way or another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to 
turn up at his own threshold, if he has any, without 
help of a consul, and perhaps be taught a lesson 
of foresight that may profit him hereafter. 

Among these stray Americans, I met with no other 
case so remarkable as that of an old man, who was in 
the habit of visiting me once in a few months, and 
soberly affirmed that he had been wandering about 
England more than a quarter of a century, (precisely 
twenty-seven years, I think,) and all the while doing 
his utmost to get home again. Herman Melville, in 
his excellent novel or biography of " Israel Potter," 
has an idea somewhat similar to this. The individ- 
ual now in question was a mild and patient, but very 
ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond de- 
scription, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large 
and somewhat red nose. He made no complaint 
of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, 
with a pathos of which he was himself evidently un- 
conscious, — "I want to get home to Ninety-second 
Street, Philadelphia. 1 ' He described himself as a 
printer by trade, and said that he had come over when 
he was a younger man, in the hope of bettering him- 
self, and for the sake of seeing the Old Country, but 
had never since been rich enough to pay his home- 
ward passage. His manner and accent did not quite 
convince me that he was an American, and I told him 
so ; but he steadfastly affirmed, — " Sir, I was born 



10 OUR OLD HOME. 

and have lived in Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia, 11 
and then went on to describe some public edifices and 
other local objects with which he used to be familiar, 
adding, with a simplicity that touched me very closely, 
" Sir, I had rather be there than here ! " Though I 
still manifested a lingering doubt, he took no offence, 
replying with the same mild depression as at first, and 
insisting again and again on Ninety-second Street. 
Up to the time when I saw him, he still got a little 
occasional job-work at his trade, but subsisted mainly 
on such charity as he met with in his wanderings, 
shifting from place to place continually, and asking 
assistance to convey him to his native land. Possi- 
bly he was an impostor, one of the multitudinous 
shapes of English vagabondism, and told his false- 
hood with such powerful simplicity, because, by many 
repetitions, he had convinced himself of its truth. 
But if, as I believe, the tale was fact, how very strange 
and sad was this old man's fate ! Homeless on a 
foreign shore, looking always towards his country, 
coming again and again to the point whence so many 
were setting sail for it, — so many who would soon 
tread in Ninety-second Street, — losing, in this long 
series of years, some of the distinctive characteristics 
of an American, and at last dying and surrendering 
his clay to be a portion of the soil whence he could 
not escape in his lifetime. 

He appeared to see that he had moved me, but did 
not attempt to press his advantage with any new argu- 
ment, or any varied form of entreaty. He had but 
scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray head, and 
in the intervals of those, like the refrain of an old 
ballad, came in the monotonous burden of his appeal, 
— "If I could only find myself in Ninety-second 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 1 1 

Street, Philadelphia ! " But even his desire of get- 
ting home had ceased to be an ardent one, (if, in- 
deed, it had not always partaken of the dreamy 
sluggishness of his character,) although it remained 
his only locomotive impulse, and perhaps the sole 
principle of life that kept his blood from actual 
torpor. 

The poor old fellow's story seemed to me almost 
as worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that 
of Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep 
consideration, but dared not incur the moral respon- 
sibility of sending him across the sea, at his age, after 
so many years of exile, when the very tradition of him 
had passed away, to find his friends dead, or forgetful, 
or irretrievably vanished, and the whole country be- 
come more truly a foreign land to him than England 
was now, — and even Ninety-second Street, in the 
weedlike decay and growth of our localities, made 
over anew and grown unrecognizable by his old eyes. 
That street, so patiently longed for, had transferred 
itself to the New Jerusalem, and he must seek it there, 
contenting his slow heart, meanwhile, with the smoke- 
begrimed thoroughfares of English towns, or the 
green country lanes and by-paths with which his wan- 
derings had made him familiar ; for doubtless he had 
a beaten track and was the " long-remembered beggar " 
now, with food and a roughly hospitable greeting ready 
for him at many a farm-house door, and his choice 
of lodging under a score of haystacks. In America, 
nothing awaited him but that worst form of disap- 
pointment which comes under the guise of a long- 
cherished and late-accomplished purpose, and then a 
year or two of dry and barren sojourn in an alms- 
house, and death among strangers at last, where he 



12 OUR OLD HOME. 

had imagined a circle of familiar faces. So I contented 
myself with giving him alms, which he thankfully 
accepted, and went away with bent shoulders and an 
aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning upon his orbit, 
however, after a few months, to tell the same sad and 
quiet story of his abode in England for more than 
twenty-seven years, in all which time he had been 
endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as 
ever, to find his way home to Ninety-second Street, 
Philadelphia. 

I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order, 
but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, 
which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at 
the moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, 
fat-faced individual came into my private room, dressed 
in a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trousers, both 
garments worn and shabby, and rather too small for 
his overgrown bulk. After a little preliminary talk, he 
turned out to be a country shopkeeper, (from Connect- 
icut, I think,) who had left a flourishing business, and 
come over to England purposely and solely to have an 
interview with the Queen. Some years before he had 
named his two children, one for Her Majesty and the 
other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photo- 
graphs of the little people, as well as of his wife and 
himself, to the illustrious godmother. The Queen had 
gratefully acknowledged the favor in a letter under the 
hand of her private secretary. Now, the shopkeeper, 
like a great many other Americans, had long cherished 
a fantastic notion that he was one of the rightful heirs 
of a rich English estate ; and on the strength of Her 
Majesty's letter and the hopes of royal patronage 
which it inspired, he had shut up his little country- 
store and come over to claim his inheritance. On the 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 13 

voyage, a German fellow-passenger had relieved him 
of his money on pretence of getting it favorably 
exchanged, and had disappeared immediately on the 
ship's arrival ; so that the poor fellow was compelled 
to pawn all his clothes except the remarkably shabby 
ones in which I beheld him, and in which (as he him- 
self hinted, with a melancholy, yet good-natured smile) 
he did not look altogether fit to see the Queen. I 
agreed with him that the bobtailed coat and mixed 
trousers constituted a very odd-looking court-dress, 
and suggested that it was doubtless his present pur- 
pose to get back to Connecticut as fast as possible. 
But no ! The resolve to see the Queen was as strong 
in him as ever ; and it was marvellous the pertinacity 
with which he clung to it amid raggedness and starva- 
tion, and the earnestness of his supplication that I 
would supply him with funds for a suitable appearance 
at Windsor Castle. 

I never had so satisfactory a perception of a com- 
plete booby before in my life ; and it caused me to 
feel kindly towards him, and yet impatient and exas- 
perated on behalf of common sense, which could not 
possibly tolerate that such an unimaginable donkey 
should exist. I laid his absurdity before him in the 
very plainest terms, but without either exciting his 
anger or shaking his resolution. " Oh, my dear man,' 1 
quoth he, with good-natured, placid, simple, and tear- 
ful stubbornness, " if you could but enter into my feel- 
ings and see the matter from beginning to end as I 
see it!" To confess the truth, I have since felt that 
I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton, and that 
there was more weight in his remonstrance than I 
chose to be sensible of, at the time ; for, like many 
men who have been in the habit of making playthings 



14 OUR OLD HOME. 

or tools of their imagination and sensibility, I was too 
rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs 
of real life. And even absurdity has its rights, when, 
as in this case, it has absorbed a human being's entire 
nature and purposes. I ought to have transmitted 
him to Mr. Buchanan, in London, who, being a good- 
natured old gentleman, and anxious, just then, to 
gratify the universal Yankee nation, might, for the 
joke's sake, have got him admittance to the Queen, 
who had fairly laid herself open to his visit, and has 
received hundreds of our countrymen on infinitely 
slighter grounds. But I was inexorable, being turned 
to flint by the insufferable proximity of a fool, and re- 
fused to interfere with his business in any way except 
to procure him a passage home. I can see his face of 
mild, ridiculous despair, at this moment, and appre- 
ciate, better than I could then, how awfully cruel he 
must have felt my obduracy to be. For years and 
years, the idea of an interview with Queen Victoria 
had haunted his poor foolish mind ; and now, when 
he really stood on English ground, and the palace- 
door was hanging ajar for him, he was expected to 
turn back, a penniless and bamboozled simpleton, 
merely because an iron-hearted consul refused to lend 
him thirty shillings (so low had his demand ulti- 
mately sunk) to buy a second-class ticket on the rail 
for London! 

He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, 
subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the 
hope of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, 
assailing me with the old petition at every opportunity, 
looking shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly 
good-tempered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through 
his tears, not without a perception of the ludicrous- 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 15 

ness of his own position. Finally, he disappeared 
altogether, and whither he had wandered, and 
whether he ever saw the Queen, or wasted quite away 
in the endeavor, I never knew ; but I remember un- 
folding the " Times," about that period, with a daily 
dread of reading an account of a ragged Yankee's 
attempt to steal into Buckingham Palace, and how he 
smiled tearfully at his captors and besought them 
to introduce him to Her Majesty. I submit to Mr. 
Secretary Seward that he ought to make diplomatic 
remonstrances to the British Ministry, and require 
them to take such order that the Queen shall not any 
longer bewilder the wits of our poor compatriots by 
responding to their epistles and thanking them for 
their photographs. 

One circumstance in the foregoing incident — I 
mean the unhappy storekeeper's notion of establishing 
his claim to an English estate — was common to a 
great many other applications, personal or by letter, 
with which I was favored by my countrymen. The 
cause of this peculiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo- 
American heart. After all these bloody wars and 
vindictive animosities, we have still an unspeakable 
yearning towards England. When our forefathers 
left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, 
but trailed along with them others, which were never 
snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening dis- 
tance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by 
the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by 
the edge of the sword. Even so late as these days, 
they remain entangled with our heart-strings, and 
might often have influenced our national cause like 
the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of England 
had been capable of managing so sensitive a kind of 



1 6 OUR OLD HOME. 

machinery. It has required nothing less than the 
boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the con- 
temptuous jealousy, the half-sagacity, invariably blind 
of one eye and often distorted of the other, that char- 
acterize this strange people, to compel us to be a great 
nation in our own right, instead of continuing vir- 
tually, if not in name, a province of their small island. 
What pains did they take to shake us off, and have 
ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them ! 
It might seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, 
rather, the Providence of God, who has doubtless a 
work for us to do, in which the massive materiality of 
the English character would have been too ponderous 
a dead-weight upon our progress. And, besides, if 
England had been wise enough to twine our new 
vigor round about her ancient strength, her power 
would have been too firmly established ever to yield, 
in its due season, to the otherwise immutable law of 
imperial vicissitude. The earth might then have be- 
held the intolerable spectacle of a sovereignty and 
institutions, imperfect, but indestructible. 

Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so 
inauspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalga- 
mation. But as an individual, the American is often 
conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong 
more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind, pathetic 
tendency to wander back again, which makes itself 
evident in such wild dreams as I have alluded to 
above, about English inheritances. A mere coinci- 
dence of names, (the Yankee one, perhaps, having 
been assumed by legislative permission,) a supposi- 
titious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently 
engraved coat-of-arms has been half scrubbed out, a 
seal with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter or 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. l? 

document in faded ink, the more scantily legible the 
better, — rubbish of this kind, found in a neglected 
drawer, has been potent enough to turn the brain of 
many an honest Republican, especially if assisted by 
an advertisement for lost heirs, cut out of a British 
newspaper. There is no estimating or believing, till 
we come into a position to know it, what foolery lurks 
latent in the breasts of very sensible people. Re- 
membering such sober extravagances, I should not be 
at all surprised to find that I am myself guilty of some 
unsuspected absurdity, that may appear to me the 
most substantial trait in my character. 

I might fill many pages with instances of this dis- 
eased American appetite for English soil. A respec- 
table-looking woman, well advanced in life, of sour 
aspect, exceedingly homely, but decidedly New Eng- 
landish in figure and manners, came to my office with 
a great bundle of documents, at the very first glimpse 
of which I apprehended something terrible. Nor was 
I mistaken. The bundle contained evidences of her 
indubitable claim to the site on which Castle Street, 
the Town Hall, the Exchange, and all the principal 
business part of Liverpool, have long been situated ; 
and with considerable peremptoriness, the good lady 
signified her expectation that I should take charge of 
her suit, and prosecute it to judgment ; not, however, 
on the equitable condition of receiving half the value 
of the property recovered, (which, in case of complete 
success, would have made both of us ten or twenty- 
fold millionnaires,) but without recompense or reim- 
bursement of legal expenses, solely as an incident 
of my official duty. Another time came two ladies, 
bearing a letter of emphatic introduction from his 
Excellency the Governor of their native State, who 



1 8 OUR OLD HOME. 

testified in most satisfactory terms to their social 
respectability. They were claimants of a great estate 
in Cheshire, and announced themselves as blood-rela- 
tives of Queen Victoria, — a point, however, which 
they deemed it expedient to keep in the background 
until their territorial rights should be established, 
apprehending that the Lord High Chancellor might 
otherwise be less likely to come to a fair decision in 
respect to them, from a probable disinclination to 
admit new members into the royal kin. Upon my 
honor, I imagine that they had an eye to the possi- 
bility of the eventual succession of one or both of them 
to the crown of Great Britain through superiority of 
title over the Brunswick line ; although, being maiden 
ladies, like their predecessor Elizabeth, they could 
hardly have hoped to establish a lasting dynasty upon 
the throne. It proves, I trust, a certain disinterest- 
edness on my part, that, encountering them thus in 
the dawn of their fortunes, I forbore to put in a plea 
for a future dukedom. 

Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman 
of refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably 
intellectual aspect. Like many men of an adventu- 
rous cast, he had so quiet a deportment, and such an 
apparent disinclination to general sociability, that you 
would have fancied him moving always along some 
peaceful and secluded walk of life. Yet, literally from 
his first hour, he had been tossed upon the surges of 
a most varied and tumultuous existence, having been 
born at sea, of American parentage, but on board of 
a Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subse- 
quent years in voyages, travels, and outlandish inci- 
dents and vicissitudes, which, methought, had hardly 
been paralleled since the days of Gulliver or De Foe. 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 19 

When his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the 
faculty of narrating these adventures with wonderful 
eloquence, working up his descriptive sketches with 
such intuitive perception of the picturesque points 
that the whole was thrown forward with a positively 
illusive effect, like matters of your own visual experi- 
ence. In fact, they were so admirably done that I 
could never more than half believe them, because the 
genuine affairs of life are not apt to transact them- 
selves so artistically. Many of his scenes were laid in 
the East, and among those seldom visited archipela- 
goes of the Indian Ocean, so that there was an Ori- 
ental fragrance breathing through his talk and an 
odor of the Spice Islands still lingering in his gar- 
ments. He had much to say of the delightful quali- 
ties of the Malay pirates, who, indeed, carry on a 
predatory warfare against the ships of all civilized 
nations, and cut every Christian throat among their 
prisoners; but (except for deeds of that character, 
which are the rule and habit of their life, and mat- 
ter of religion and conscience with them,) they are 
a gentle-natured people, of primitive innocence and 
integrity. 

But his best story was about a race of men, (if men 
they were,) who seemed so fully to realize Swift's 
wicked fable of the Yahoos, that my friend was much 
"exercised with psychological speculations whether or 
no they had any souls. They dwelt in the wilds of 
Ceylon, like other savage beasts, hairy, and spotted 
with tufts of fur, filthy, shameless, weaponless, (though 
warlike in their individual bent,) tool-less, houseless, 
language-less, except for a few guttural sounds, hide- 
ously dissonant, whereby they held some rudest kind 
of communication among themselves. They lacked 



20 OUR OLD HOME. 

both memory and foresight, and were wholly desti- 
tute of government, social institutions, or law or 
rulership of any description, except the immediate 
tyranny of the strongest ; radically untamable, more- 
over, save that the people of the country managed to 
subject a few of the less ferocious and stupid ones to 
out-door servitude among their other cattle. They 
were beastly in almost all their attributes, and that to 
such a degree that the observer, losing sight of any 
link betwixt them and manhood, could generally wit- 
ness their brutalities without greater horror than at 
those of some disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. 
And yet, at times, comparing what were the lowest 
general traits in his own race, with what was highest 
in these abominable monsters, he found a ghastly 
similitude that half compelled him to recognize them 
as human brethren. 

After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable 
acquaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch 
government, and had suffered (this, at least, being 
matter of fact) nearly two years 1 imprisonment with 
confiscation of a large amount of property, for which 
Mr. Belmont, our minister at the Hague, had just 
made a peremptory demand of reimbursement and 
damages. Meanwhile, since arriving in England on 
his way to the United States, he had been provi- 
dentially led to inquire into the circumstances of his* 
birth on shipboard, and had discovered that not him- 
self alone, but another baby, had come into the world 
during the same voyage of the prolific vessel, and that 
there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing 
that these two children had been assigned to the 
wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early 
days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 21 

parents were aware of the exchange. The family to 
which he felt authorized to attribute his lineage was 
that of a nobleman, in the picture-gallery of whose 
country-seat (whence, if I mistake not, our adventurous 
friend had just returned) he had discovered a portrait 
bearing a striking resemblance to himself. As soon 
as he should have reported the outrageous action of 
the Dutch government to President Pierce and the 
Secretary of State, and recovered the confiscated 
property, he purposed to return to England and 
establish his claim to the nobleman's title and 
estate. 

I had accepted his Oriental fantasies, (which, indeed, 
to do him justice, have been recorded by scientific 
societies among the genuine phenomena of natural 
history,) not as matters of indubitable credence, but 
as allowable specimens of an imaginative traveller's 
vivid coloring and rich embroidery on the coarse tex- 
ture and dull neutral tints of truth. The English 
romance was among the latest communications that 
he intrusted to my private ear ; and as soon as I heard 
the first chapter, — so wonderfully akin to what I 
might have wrought out of my own head, not un- 
practised in such figments, — I began to repent hav- 
ing made myself responsible for the future nobleman's 
passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Never- 
theless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behind- 
hand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars 
was certainly in the hands of our government, and 
might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, 
which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I 
have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned out 
to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and his English coun- 
try-seat a mere castle in the air, — which I exceedingly 



22 OUR OLD HOME. 

regret, for he was a delightful companion and a verj 
gentlemanly man. 

A Consul, in his position of universal responsibility, 
the general adviser and helper, sometimes finds him- 
self compelled to assume the guardianship of person- 
ages who, in their own sphere, are supposed capable of 
superintending the highest interests of whole communi- 
ties. An elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, once 
put the desire and expectation of all our penniless 
vagabonds into a very suitable phrase, by pathetically 
entreating me to be a " father to him ; " and, simple as 
I sit scribbling here, I have acted a father's part, not 
only by scores of such unthrifty old children as him- 
self, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It 
may be well for persons who are conscious of any radi- 
cal weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any 
unlawful propensity, any unhallowed impulse, which 
(while surrounded with the manifold restraints that 
protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong 
enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where 
he is at home) they may have succeeded in keep- 
ing under the lock and key of strictest propriety, — 
it may be well for them, before seeking the perilous 
freedom of a distant land, released from the watchful 
eyes of neighborhoods and coteries, lightened of that 
wearisome burden, an immaculate name, and blissfully 
obscure after years of local prominence, — it may be 
well for such individuals to know that when they set 
foot on a foreign shore, the long-imprisoned Evil, 
scenting a wild license in the unaccustomed atmos- 
phere, is apt to grow riotous in its iron cage. It rat- 
tles the rusty barriers with gigantic turbulence, and 
if there be an infirm joint anywhere in the framework, 
it breaks madly forth, compressing the mischief of a 
lifetime into a little space. 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 2% 

A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the 
Consulate for two or three weeks, directed to a certain 
Doctor of Divinity, who had left America by a sailing- 
packet and was still upon the sea. In due time, the 
vessel arrived, and the reverend Doctor paid me a 
visit. He was a fine-looking middle-aged gentleman, 
a perfect model of clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet 
with the air of a man of the world rather than a student, 
though overspread with the graceful sanctity of a 
popular metropolitan divine, a part of whose duty it 
might be to exemplify the natural accordance between 
Christianity and good-breeding. He seemed a little 
excited, as an American is apt to be on first arriv- 
ing in England, but conversed with intelligence as 
well as animation, making himself so agreeable that 
his visit stood out in considerable relief from the 
monotony of my daily commonplace. As I learned 
from authentic sources, he was somewhat distin- 
guished in his own region for fervor and eloquence in 
the pulpit, but was now compelled to relinquish it 
temporarily for the purpose of renovating his impaired 
health by an extensive tour in Europe. Promising to 
dine with me, he took up his bundle of letters and 
went away. 

The Doctor, however, failed to make his appear- 
ance at dinner-time, or to apologize the next day for 
his absence ; and in the course of a day or two more, 
I forgot all about him, concluding that he must have 
set forth on his continental travels, the plan of which 
he had sketched out at our interview. But, by and 
by, I received a call from the master of the vessel in 
which he had arrived. He was in some alarm about 
his passenger, whose luggage remained on shipboard, 
but of whom nothing had been heard or seen since 



24 OUR OLD HOME. 

the moment of his departure from the Consulate. We 
conferred together, the Captain and I, about the ex- 
pediency of setting the police on the traces (if any 
were to be found) of our vanished friend ; but it struck 
me that the good Captain was singularly reticent, and 
that there was something a little mysterious in a few 
points that he hinted at, rather than expressed ; so 
that, scrutinizing the affair carefully, I surmised that 
the intimacy of life on shipboard might have taught 
him more about the reverend gentleman than, for some 
reason or other, he deemed it prudent to reveal. At 
home, in our native country, I would have looked to 
the Doctor's personal safety and left his reputation to 
take care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a 
thousand saintly clergymen would amply dazzle out 
any lamentable spot on a single brother's character. 
But in scornful and invidious England, on the idea 
that the credit of the sacred office was measurably 
intrusted to my discretion, I could not endure, for the 
sake of American Doctors of Divinity generally, that 
this particular Doctor should cut an ignoble figure in 
the police reports of the English newspapers, except 
at the last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter 
myself, will acknowledge that I acted on their own 
principle. Besides, it was now too late ; the mischief 
and violence, if any had been impending, were not of 
a kind which it requires the better part of a week to 
perpetrate -, and to sum up the entire matter, I felt cer- 
tain, from a good deal of somewhat similar experience, 
that, if the missing Doctor still breathed this vital air, 
he would turn up at the Consulate as soon as his 
money should be stolen or spent. 

Precisely a week after this reverend person's disap- 
pearance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 2$ 

gentleman in a blue military surtout, braided at the 
seams, but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the 
wearer had been bivouacking in it throughout a Cri- 
mean campaign. It was buttoned up to the very chin, 
except where three or four of the buttons were lost ; 
nor was there any glimpse of a white shirt-collar illu- 
minating the rusty black cravat. A grisly moustache 
was just beginning to roughen the stranger's upper 
lip. He looked disreputable to the last degree, but 
still had a ruined air of good society glimmering about 
him, like a few specks of polish on a sword-blade that 
has lain corroding in a mud-puddle. I took him to 
be some American marine officer, of dissipated habits, 
or perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling into 
the wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilder- 
ment of last night's debauch. He greeted me, how- 
ever, with polite familiarity, as though we had been 
previously acquainted ; whereupon I drew coldly back 
(as sensible people naturally do, whether from 
strangers or former friends, when too evidently at 
odds with fortune) and requested to know who my 
visitor might be, and what was his business at the 
Consulate. " Am I then so changed ? " he exclaimed 
with a vast depth of tragic intonation \ and after a 
little blind and bewildered talk, behold ! the truth 
flashed upon me. It was the Doctor of Divinity ! If 
I had meditated a scene or a coup de thedtre, I could 
not have contrived a more effectual one than by this 
simple and genuine difficulty of recognition. The 
poor Divine must have felt that he had lost his per- 
sonal identity through the misadventures of one little 
week. And, to say the truth, he did look as if, like 
Job, on account of his especial sanctity, he had been 
delivered over to the direst temptations of Satan, and 



26 OUR OLD HOME. 

proving weaker than the man of Uz, the Arch Enemy 
had been empowered to drag him through Tophet, 
transforming him, in the process, from the most deco- 
rous of metropolitan clergymen into the rowdiest and 
dirtiest of disbanded officers. I never fathomed the 
mystery of his military costume, but conjectured that 
a lurking sense of fitness had induced him to ex- 
change his clerical garments for this habit of a sinner; 
nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of 
vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated him- 
self, — being more than satisfied to know that the 
outcasts of society can sink no lower than this poor, 
desecrated wretch had sunk. 

The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen 
to a layman, of administering moral and religious 
reproof to a Doctor of Divinity ; but finding the occa- 
sion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan wax- 
ing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of 
conscience not to let it pass entirely unimproved. 
The truth is, I was unspeakably shocked and dis- 
gusted. Not, however, that I was then to learn that 
clergymen are made of the same flesh and blood as 
other people, and perhaps lack one small safeguard 
which the rest of us possess, because they are aware 
of their own peccability, and therefore cannot look up 
to the clerical class for the proof of the possibility of 
a pure life on earth, with such reverential confidence 
as we are prone to do. But I remembered the inno- 
cent faith of my boyhood, and the good old silver- 
headed clergyman, who seemed to me as much a saint 
then on earth as he is now in heaven, and partly for 
whose sake, through all these darkening years, I re- 
tain a devout, though not intact nor unwavering 
respect for the entire fraternity. What a hideous 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 2J 

wrong, therefore, had the backslider inflicted on his 
brethren, and still more on me, who much needed 
whatever fragments of broken reverence (broken, not 
as concerned religion, but its earthly institutions and 
professors), it might yet be possible to patch into a 
sacred image ! Should all pulpits and communion- 
tables have thenceforth a stain upon them, and the 
guilty one go unrebuked for it ? So I spoke to the 
unhappy man as I never thought myself warranted in 
speaking to any other mortal, hitting him hard, doing 
my utmost to find out his vulnerable part, and prick 
him into the depths of it. And not without more 
effect than I had dreamed of, or desired ! 

No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor's reversed 
position, thus standing up lo receive such a fulmi na- 
tion as the clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclu- 
sive right of inflicting, might give additional weight 
and sting to the words which I found utterance for. 
But there was another reason (which, had I in the 
least suspected it, would have closed my lips at once,) 
for his feeling morbidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke 
that I administered. The unfortunate man had come 
to me, laboring under one of the consequences of his 
riotous outbreak, in the shape of delirium tremens ; 
he bore a hell within the compass of his own breast, 
all the torments of which blazed up with tenfold 
inveteracy when I thus took upon myself the devil's 
office of stirring up the red-hot embers. His emotions, 
as well as the external movement and expression of 
them by voice, countenance, and gesture, were terribly 
exaggerated by the tremendous vibration of nerves 
resulting from the disease. It was the deepest tragedy 
I ever witnessed. I know sufficiently, from that one 
experience ; how a condemned soul would manifest 



28 OUR OLD HOME. 

its agonies ; and for the future, if I have anything to 
do with sinners, I mean to operate upon them through 
sympathy, and not rebuke. What had I to do with 
rebuking him ? The disease, long latent in his heart, 
had shown itself in a frightful eruption on the surface 
of his life. That was all ! Is it a thing to scold the 
sufferer for ? 

To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor 
of Divinity, having been robbed of all his money in 
this little airing beyond the limits of propriety, was 
easily persuaded to give up the intended tour and 
return to his bereaved flock, who, very probably, 
were thereafter conscious of an increased unction in 
his soul-stirring eloquence, without suspecting the 
awful depths into which their pastor had dived in 
quest of it. His voice is now silent. I leave it to 
members of his own profession to decide whether it 
was better for him thus to sin outright, and so to be 
let into the miserable secret what manner of man he 
was, or to have gone through life outwardly unspotted, 
making the first discovery of his latent evil at the 
judgment-seat. It has occurred to me that his dire 
calamity, as both he and I regarded it, might have 
been the only method by which precisely such a man 
as himself, and so situated, could be redeemed. He 
has learned, ere now, how that matter stood. 

For a man, with a natural tendency to meddle 
with other people's business, there could not possibly 
be a more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Con- 
sulate. For myself, I had never been in the habit 
of feeling that I could sufficiently comprehend any 
particular conjunction of circumstances with human 
character, to justify me in thrusting in my awkward 
agency among the intricate and unintelligible ma- 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 29 

chinery of Providence. I have always hated to give 
advice, especially when there is a prospect of its 
being taken. It is only one-eyed people who love to 
advise, or have any spontaneous promptitude of action. 
When a man opens both his eyes, he generally sees 
about as many reasons for acting in any one way as 
in any other, and quite as many for acting in neither ; 
and is therefore likely to leave his friends to regulate 
their own conduct, and also to remain quiet as regards 
his especial affairs till necessity shall prick him on- 
ward. Nevertheless, the world and individuals flourish 
upon a constant succession of blunders. The secret 
of English practical success lies in their characteristic 
faculty of shutting one eye, whereby they get so dis- 
tinct and decided a view of what immediately concerns 
them that they go stumbling towards it over a hun- 
dred insurmountable obstacles, and achieve a magnifi- 
cent triumph without ever being aware of half its 
difficulties. If General McClellan could but have shut 
his left eye, the right one would long ago have guided 
us into Richmond. Meanwhile, I have strayed far 
away from the Consulate, where, as I was about to 
say, I was compelled, in spite of my disinclination, 
to impart both advice and assistance in multifarious 
affairs that did not personally concern me, and pre- 
sume that I effected about as little mischief as other 
men in similar contingencies. The duties of the office 
carried me to prisons, police-courts, hospitals, lunatic 
asylums, coroner's inquests, death-beds, funerals, and 
brought me in contact with insane people, criminals, 
ruined speculators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, 
brother-consuls, and all manner of simpletons and 
unfortunates, in greater number and variety than I 
had ever dreamed of as pertaining to America ; in 



30 OUR OLD HOME. 

addition to whom there was an equivalent multitude 
of English rogues, dexterously counterfeiting the 
genuine Yankee article. It required great discrimi- 
nation not to be taken in by these last-mentioned 
scoundrels ; for they knew how to imitate our national 
traits, had been at great pains to instruct themselves 
as regarded American localities, and were not readily 
to be caught by a cross-examination as to the topo- 
graphical features, public institutions, or prominent 
inhabitants, of the places where they pretended to 
belong. The best shibboleth I ever hit upon lay in 
the pronunciation of the word " been, 11 which the 
English invariably make to rhyme with " green," and 
we Northerners, at least, (in accordance, I think, with 
the custom of Shakspeare's time,) universally pro- 
nounce "bin." 

All the matters that I have been treating of, how- 
ever, were merely incidental, and quite distinct from 
the real business of the office. A great part of the 
wear and tear of mind and temper resulted from the 
bad relations between the seamen and officers of 
American ships. Scarcely a morning passed, but that 
some sailor came to show the marks of his ill-usage 
on shipboard. Often, it was a whole crew of them, 
each with his broken head or livid bruise, and all 
testifying with one voice to a constant series of savage 
outrages during the voyage ; or, it might be, they laid 
an accusation of actual murder, perpetrated by the first 
or second officers with many blows of steel-knuckles, 
a rope's end, or a marline-spike, or by the captain, in 
the twinkling of an eye, with a shot of his pistol. 
Taking the seamen's view of the case, you would sup- 
pose that the gibbet was hungry for the murderers. 
Listening to the Captain's defence, you would seem 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 31 

to discover that he and his officers were the humanest 
of mortals, but were driven to a wholesome severity 
by the mutinous conduct of the crew, who, moreover, 
had themselves slain their comrade in the drunken 
riot and confusion of the first day or two after they 
were shipped. Looked at judicially, there appeared 
to be no right side to the matter, nor any right side 
possible in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of 
the American mercantile marine. The Consul could 
do little, except to take depositions, hold forth the 
greasy Testament to be profaned anew with perjured 
kisses, and, in a few instances of murder or man- 
slaughter, carry the case before an English magistrate, 
who generally decided that the evidence was too con- 
tradictory to authorize the transmission of the accused 
for trial in America. The newspapers all over Eng- 
land contained paragraphs, inveighing against the 
cruelties of American shipmasters. The British Par- 
liament took up the matter, (for nobody is so humane 
as John Bull, when his benevolent propensities are to 
be gratified by finding fault with his neighbor,) and 
caused Lord John Russell to remonstrate with our 
Government on the outrages for which it was respon- 
sible before the world, and which it failed to prevent 
or punish. The American Secretary of State, old 
General Cass, responded, with perfectly astounding 
ignorance of the subject, to the effect that the state- 
ments of outrages had probably been exaggerated, that 
the present laws of the United States were quite ade- 
quate to deal with them, and that the interference of 
the British Minister was uncalled for. 

The truth is, that the state of affairs was really very 
horrible, and could be met by no laws at that time (or 
I presume now) in existence. I once thought of writ- 



32 OUR OLD HOME. 

ing a pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the Con- 
sulate before finding time to effect my purpose ; and 
all that phase of my life immediately assumed so 
dreamlike a consistency that I despaired of making it 
seem solid or tangible to the public. And now it 
looks distant and dim, like troubles of a century ago. 
The origin of the evil lay in the character of the sea- 
men, scarcely any of whom were American, but the 
offscourings and refuse of all the seaports of the world, 
such stuff as piracy is made of, together with a con- 
siderable intermixture of returning emigrants, and a 
sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citizens. 
Even with such material, the ships were very inade- 
quately manned. The shipmaster found himself upon 
the deep, with a vast responsibility of property and 
human life upon his hands, and no means of salvation 
except by compelling his inefficient and demoralized 
crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be re- 
quired of the same number of able seamen. By law 
he had been intrusted with no discretion of judicious 
punishment ; he therefore habitually left the whole 
matter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, men 
often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew. 
Hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages, unjusti- 
fiable assaults, shameful indignities, and nameless 
cruelty, demoralizing alike to the perpetrators and the 
sufferers ; these enormities fell into the ocean between 
the two countries, and could be punished in neither. 
Many miserable stories come back upon my memory 
as I write ; wrongs that were immense, but for which 
nobody could be held responsible, and which, indeed, 
the closer you looked into them, the more they lost the 
aspect of wilful misdoing and assumed that of an in- 
evitable calamity. It was the fault of a system, the 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 33 

misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may, how- 
ever, there will be no possibility of dealing effectually 
with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent 
with our national dignity or interests to allow the Eng- 
lish courts, under such restrictions as may seem fit, a 
jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board our 
vessels in mid-ocean. 

In such a life as this, the American shipmaster 
develops himself into a man of iron energies, daunt- 
less courage, and inexhaustible resource, at the ex- 
pense, it must be acknowledged, of some of the higher 
and gentler traits which might do him excellent ser- 
vice in maintaining his authority. The class has 
deteriorated of late years on account of the narrower 
field of selection, owing chiefly to the diminution of 
that excellent body of respectably educated New Eng- 
land seamen, from the flower of whom the officers 
used to be recruited. Yet I found them, in many 
cases, very agreeable and intelligent companions, with 
less nonsense about them than landsmen usually have, 
eschewers of fine-spun theories, delighting in square 
and tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with 
prejudices that stuck to their brains like barnacles 
to a ship's bottom. I never could flatter myself that 
I was a general favorite with them. One or two, per- 
haps, even now, would scarcely meet me on amicable 
terms. Endowed universally with a great pertinacity 
of will, they especially disliked the interference of a 
consul with their management on shipboard ; not- 
withstanding which I thrust in my very limited au- 
thority at every available opening, and did the utmost 
that lay in my power, though with lamentably small 
effect, towards enforcing a better kind of discipline. 
They thought, no doubt, (and on plausible grounds 



34 OUR OLD HOME. 

enough, but scarcely appreciating just that one little 
grain of hard New England sense, oddly thrown in 
among the flimsier composition of the Consul's char- 
acter,) that he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as peo- 
ple said of him, a fanciful recluse, could not possibly 
understand anything of the difficulties or the necessi- 
ties of a shipmaster's position. But their cold regards 
were rather acceptable than otherwise, for it is exceed- 
ingly awkward to assume a judicial austerity in the 
morning towards a man with whom you have been 
hobnobbing over night. 

With the technical details of the business of that 
great Consulate, (for great it then was, though now, 
I fear, wofully fallen off, and perhaps never to be 
revived in anything like its former extent,) I did not 
much interfere. They could safely be left to the 
treatment of two as faithful, upright, and competent 
subordinates, both Englishmen, as ever a man was 
fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life alto- 
gether new and strange to him. I had come over 
with instructions to supply both their places with 
Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of know- 
ing my own interest and the public's, I quietly kept 
hold of them, being little inclined to open the con- 
sular doors to a spy of the State Department or an 
intriguer for my own office. The venerable Vice- 
Consul Mr. Pearce, had witnessed the successive 
arrivals of a score of newly appointed Consuls, shad- 
owy and short-lived dignitaries, and carried his remi- 
niscences back to the epoch of Consul Maury, who 
was appointed by Washington, and has acquired 
almost the grandeur of a mythical personage in the 
annals of the Consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. 
Wilding, who has since succeeded to the Vice-Consul- 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 35 

ship, was a man of English integrity — not that the 
English are more honest than ourselves, but only there 
is a certain sturdy reliableness common among them, 
which we do not quite so invariably manifest in just 
these subordinate positions — of English integrity, 
combined with American acuteness of intellect, quick- 
wittedness, and diversity of talent. It seemed an im- 
mense pity that he should wear out his life at a desk, 
without a step in advance from year's end to year's 
end, when, had it been his luck to be born on our 
side of the water, his bright faculties and clear probity 
would have insured him eminent success in whatever 
path he might adopt. Meanwhile, it would have been 
a sore mischance to me, had any better fortune on his 
part deprived me of Mr. Wilding's services. 

A fair amount of common sense, some acquaintance 
with the United States Statutes, an insight into char- 
acter, a tact of management, a general knowledge of 
the world, and a reasonable but not too inveterately 
decided preference for his own will and judgment 
over those of interested people, — these natural attri- 
butes and moderate acquirements will enable a consul 
to perform many of his duties respectably, but not to 
dispense with a great variety of other qualifications, 
only attainable by long experience. Yet, I think, few 
consuls are so well accomplished. An appointment of 
whatever grade, in the diplomatic or consular service 
of America, is too often what the English call a 
" job " ; that is to say, it is made on private and 
personal grounds, without a paramount eye to the 
public good or the gentleman's especial fitness for the 
position. It is not too much to say, (of course allow- 
ing for a brilliant exception here and there,) that an 
American never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign 



36 OUR OLD HOME. 

post, nor has time to make himself so, before the 
revolution of the political wheel discards him from 
his office. Our country wrongs itself by permitting 
such a system of unsuitable appointments, and, still 
more, of removals for no cause, just when the incum- 
bent might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. 
Mere ignorance of official detail is of comparatively 
small moment ; though it is considered indispensable, 
I presume, that a man in &ny private capacity shall be 
thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and opera- 
tion of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his 
position on having attained such knowledge. But 
there are so many more important things to be 
thought of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, 
that his technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly 
worth mentioning. 

One great part of a consul's duty, for example, 
should consist in building up for himself a recognized 
position in the society where he resides, so that his 
local influence might be felt in behalf of his own coun- 
try, and, so far as they are compatible (as they gen- 
erally are to the utmost extent) for the interests of 
both nations. The foreign city should know that it 
has a permanent inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher 
in him. There are many conjunctures (and one of 
them is now upon us) where a long-established, hon- 
ored, and trusted American citizen, holding a public 
position under our Government in such a town as 
Liverpool, might go far towards swaying and direct- 
ing the sympathies of the inhabitants. He might 
throw his own weight into the balance against mis- 
chief-makers ; he might have set his foot on the first 
little spark of malignant purpose, which the next wind 
may blow into a national war. But we wilfully give 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 2)7 

up all advantages of this kind. The position is totally 
beyond the attainment of an American ; there to-day, 
bristling all over with the porcupine quills of our 
Republic, and gone to-morrow, just as he is becoming 
sensible of the broader and more generous patriotism 
which might almost amalgamate with that of England, 
without losing an atom of its native force and flavor. 
In the changes that appear to await us, and some of 
which, at least, can hardly fail to be for good, let us 
hope for a reform in this matter. 

For myself, as the gentle reader would spare me 
the trouble of saying, I was not at all the kind of man 
to grow into such an ideal Consul as I have here 
suggested. I never in my life desired to be burdened 
with public influence. I disliked my office from the 
first, and never came into any good accordance with 
it. Its dignity, so far as it had any, was an incum- 
brance ; the attentions it drew upon me (such as 
invitations to Mayor's banquets and public celebra- 
tions of all kinds, where, to my horror, I found myself 
expected to stand up and speak) were — as I may 
say, without incivility or ingratitude, because there 
is nothing personal in that sort of hospitality — a 
bore. The official business was irksome, and often 
painful. There was nothing pleasant about the 
whole affair except the emoluments ; and even those, 
never too bountifully reaped, were diminished by 
more than half in the second or third year of my 
incumbency. All this being true, I was quite prepared, 
in advance of the inauguration of Mr. Buchanan, to 
send in my resignation. When my successor arrived, 
I drew the long, delightful breath which first made 
me thoroughly sensible what an unnatural life I had 
been leading, and compelled me to admire myself for 



38 OUR OLD HOME. 

having battled with it so sturdily. The new-comer 
proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentleman, 
an F. F. V., and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, 
a Southern Fire-Eater, — an announcement to which 
I responded, with similar good-humor and self-com- 
placency, by parading my descent from an ancient 
line of Massachusetts Puritans. Since our brief ac- 
quaintanceship, my fire-eating friend has had ample 
opportunities to banquet on his favorite diet, hot and 
hot, in the Confederate service. For myself, as soon 
as I was out of office, the retrospect began to look 
unreal. I could scarcely believe that it was I, — that 
figure whom they called a Consul, — but a sort of 
Double Gauger, who had been permitted to assume 
my aspect, under which he went through his shadowy 
duties with a tolerable show of efficiency, while my 
real self had lain, as regarded my proper mode of 
being and acting, in a state of suspended anima- 
tion. 

The same sense of illusion still pursues me. There 
is some mistake in this matter. I have been writing 
about another man's consular experiences, with which, 
through some mysterious medium of transmitted 
ideas, I find myself intimately acquainted, but in 
which I cannot possibly have had a personal interest. 
Is it not a dream altogether? The figure of that poor 
Doctor of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike ; so do 
those of the Oriental adventurer with the visionary 
coronet above his brow, and the moonstruck visitor 
of the Queen, and the poor old wanderer, seeking 
his native country through English high-ways and 
by-ways for almost thirty years ; and so would a 
hundred others that I might summon up with similar 
distinctness. But were they more than shadows? 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 39 

Surely, I think not. Nor are these present pages a 
bit of intrusive autobiography. Let not the reader 
wrong me by supposing it. I never should have 
written with half such unreserve, had it been a por- 
tion of this life congenial with my nature, which I am 
living now, instead of a series of incidents and char- 
acters entirely apart from my own concerns, and on 
which the qualities personally proper to me could 
have had no bearing. Almost the only real incidents, 
as I see them now, were the visits of a young English 
friend, a scholar and a literary amateur, between whom 
and myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I 
trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and 
sit or stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and 
eloquently with me about literature and life, his own 
national characteristics and mine, with such kindly 
endurance of the many rough republicanisms where- 
with I assailed him, and such frank and amiable 
assertion of all sorts of English prejudices and 
mistakes, that I understood his countrymen infinitely 
the better for him, and was almost prepared to love 
the intensest Englishman of them all, for his sake. 
It would gratify my cherished remembrance of this 
dear friend, if I could manage, without offending him, 
or letting the public know it, to introduce his name 
upon my page. Bright was the illumination of my 
dusky little apartment, as often as he made his ap- 
pearance there! 

The English sketches which I have been offering 
to the public, comprise a few of the more external 
and therefore more readily manageable things that I 
took note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment 
of my consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very 
delightful as a place of residence, is a most conven- 



40 OUR OLD HOME. 

ient and admirable point to get away from. London 
is only five hours off by the fast train. Chester, the 
most curious town in England, with its encompassing 
wall, its ancient rows, and its venerable cathedral, is 
close at hand. North Wales, with all its hills and 
ponds, its noble sea-scenery, its multitude of gray 
castles and strange old villages, may be glanced at in 
a summer day or two. The lakes and mountains of 
Cumberland and Westmoreland may be reached 
before dinner-time. The haunted and legendary Isle 
of Man, a little kingdom by itself, lies within the 
scope of an afternoon's voyage. Edinburgh or Glas- 
gow are attainable over-night, and Loch Lomond, 
betimes in the morning. Visiting these famous 
localities, and a great many others, I hope that I do 
not compromise my American patriotism by acknowl- 
edging that I was often conscious of a fervent heredi- 
tary attachment to the native soil of our forefathers, 
and felt it to be our own Old Home. 






LEAMINGTON SPA. 4 1 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 

In the course of several visits and stays of consider- 
able length we acquired a homelike feeling towards 
Leamington, and came back thither again and again, 
chiefly because we had been there before. Wander- 
ing and wayside people, such as we had long since 
become, retain a few of the instincts that belong to a 
more settled way of life, and often prefer familiar and 
commonplace objects (for the very reason that they 
are so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might 
be thought much better worth the seeing. There is 
a small nest of a place in Leamington — at No. 10, 
Lansdowne Circus — upon which, to this day, my 
reminiscences are apt to settle as one of the coziest 
nooks in England or in the world ; not that it had 
any special charm of its own, but only that we stayed 
long enough to know it well, and even to grow a little 
tired of it. In my opinion, the very tediousness of 
home and friends makes a part of what we love them 
for ; if it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other 
elements of life, there may be mad enjoyment, but no 
happiness. 

The modest abode to which I have alluded forms 
one of a circular range of pretty, moderate-sized, two- 
story houses, all built on nearly the same plan, and 
each provided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its 
tufts of box trimmed into globes and other fantastic 



42 OUR OLD HOME. 

shapes, and its verdant hedges shutting the house in 
from the common drive and dividing it from its equally 
cozy neighbors. Coming out of the door, and taking 
a turn round the circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult 
to find your way back by any distinguishing individ- 
uality of your own habitation. In the centre of the 
Circus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small 
play-place and sylvan retreat for the children of the 
precinct, permeated by brief paths through the fresh 
English grass, and shadowed by various shrubbery ; 
amid which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in a 
deep seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot 
from the windows of all the surrounding houses. 
But, in truth, with regard to the rest of the town and 
the world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclu- 
sion ; for the ordinary stream of life does not run 
through this little, quiet pool, and few or none of the 
inhabitants seem to be troubled with any business or 
outside activities. I used to set them down as half- 
pay officers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly 
maiden ladies, and other people of respectability, but 
small account, such as hang on the world's skirts 
rather than actually belong to it. The quiet of the 
place was seldom disturbed, except by the grocer and 
butcher, who came to receive orders, or by the cabs, 
hackney-coaches, and Bath-chairs, in which the ladies 
took an infrequent airing, or the livery-steed which the 
retired captain sometimes bestrode for a morning ride, 
or by the red-coated postman who went his rounds 
twice a day to deliver letters, and again in the even- 
ing, ringing a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. 
In merely mentioning these slight interruptions of its 
sluggish stillness, I seem to myself to disturb too 
much the atmosphere of quiet that brooded over the 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 43 

spot ; whereas its impression upon me was, that the 
world had never found the way hither, or had for- 
gotten it, and that the fortunate inhabitants were the 
only ones who possessed the spell-word of admittance. 
Nothing could have suited me better, at the time ; for 
I had been holding a position of public servitude, 
which imposed upon me (among a great many lighter 
duties) the ponderous necessity of being universally 
civil and sociable. 

Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of 
society, he might find it more readily in Leamington 
than in most other English towns. It is a permanent 
watering-place, a sort of institution to which I do not 
know any close parallel in American life : for such 
places as Saratoga bloom only for the summer season, 
and offer a thousand dissimilitudes even then ; while 
Leamington seems to. be always in flower, and serves 
as a home to the homeless all the year round. Its 
original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town's 
coming into prosperous existence, lies in the fiction 
of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality 
that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, 
groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and 
spread themselves along the banks of the little river 
Learn. This miracle accomplished, the beneficent 
fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and appears 
to have given up all pretensions to the remedial vir- 
tues formerly attributed to it. I know not whether its 
waters are ever tasted nowadays ; but not the less 
does Leamington — in pleasant Warwickshire, at the 
very midmost point of England, in a good hunting 
neighborhood, and surrounded by country-seats and 
castles — continue to be a resort of transient visitors, 
and the more permanent abode of a class of genteel, 



44 OUR OLD HOME. 

unoccupied, well-to-do, but not very wealthy people, 
such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons 
who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are 
inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, I 
suppose, a sort of town and country life in one. 

In its present aspect the town is of no great age. 
In contrast with the antiquity of many places in its 
neighborhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems 
almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an 
English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon 
hundreds of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy 
lapse of time during which it existed as a small village 
of thatched houses, clustered round a priory ; and it 
would still have been precisely such a rural village, 
but for a certain Doctor Jephson, v/ho lived within 
the memory of man, and who found out the magic 
well, and foresaw what fairy wealth might be made to 
flow from it. A public garden has been laid out along 
the margin of the Leam, and called the Jephson Gar- 
den, in honor of him who created the prosperity of 
his native spot. A little way within the garden-gate 
there is a circular temple of Grecian architecture, 
beneath the dome of which stands a marble statue of 
the good Doctor, very well executed, and representing 
him with a face of fussy activity and benevolence : 
just the kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up 
the fortunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, 
to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous 
speculation. 

The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most 
other English pleasure-grounds ; for, aided by their 
moist climate and not too fervid sun, the landscape- 
gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces into 
attractive scenery, chiefly through the skilful arrange- 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 45 

ment of trees and shrubbery. An Englishman aims 
at this effect even in the little patches under the win- 
dows of a suburban villa, and achieves it on a larger 
scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden is 
shadowed with trees of a fine growth, standing alone, 
or in dusky groves and dense entanglements, pervaded 
by woodland paths ; and emerging from these pleasant 
glooms, we come upon a breadth of sunshine, where the 
green sward — so vividly green that it has a kind of 
lustre in it — is spotted with beds of gemlike flowers. 
Rustic chairs and benches are scattered about, some 
of them ponderously fashioned out of the stumps of 
obtruncated trees, and others more artfully made with 
intertwining branches, or perhaps an imitation of such 
frail handiwork in iron. In a central part of the Gar- 
den is an archery-ground, where laughing maidens 
practise at the butts, generally missing their ostensible 
mark, but, by the mere grace of their action, sending 
an unseen shaft into some young man's heart. There 
is space, moreover, within these precincts, for an 
artificial lake, with a little green island in the midst of 
it ; both lake and island being the haunt of swans, 
whose aspect and movement in the water are most 
beautiful and stately, — most infirm, disjointed, and 
decrepit, when, unadvisedly, they see fit to emerge, 
and try to walk upon dry land. In the latter case, 
they look like a breed of uncommonly ill-contrived 
geese ; and I record the matter here for the sake of 
the moral, — that we should never pass judgment on 
the merits of any person or thing, unless we behold 
them in the sphere and circumstances to which they 
are specially adapted. In still another part of the 
Garden there is a labyrinthine maze, formed of an 
intricacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself 



46 OUR OLD HOME. 

in which, a man might wander for hours inextricably 
within a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me 
a sad emblem of the mental and moral perplexities in 
which we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet 
large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder us 
with a weary movement, but no genuine progress. 

The Learn — the " high complectioned Learn, 11 as 
Drayton calls it — after drowsing across the princi- 
pal street of the town beneath a handsome bridge, 
skirts along the margin of the Garden without any 
perceptible flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Con- 
cord the laziest river in the world, but now assign 
that amiable distinction to the little English stream. 
Its water is by no means transparent, but has a 
greenish, goose-puddly hue, which, however, accords 
well with the other coloring and characteristics of the 
scene, and is disagreeable neither to sight nor smell. 
Certainly, this river is a perfect feature of that gentle 
picturesqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping, 
as it does, beneath a margin of willows that droop 
into its bosom, and other trees, of deeper verdure 
than our own country can boast, inclining lovingly 
over it. On the Garden-side it is bordered by a 
shadowy, secluded grove, with winding paths among 
its boskiness, affording many a peep at the river's 
imperceptible lapse and tranquil gleam ; and on the 
opposite shore stands the priory-church, with its 
churchyard full of shrubbery and tombstones. 

The business portion of the town clusters about the 
banks of the Learn, and is naturally densest around 
the well to which the modern settlement owes its 
existence. Here are the commercial inns, the post- 
office, the furniture dealers, the ironmongers, and all 
the heavy and homely establishments that connect 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 47 

themselves even with the airiest modes of human life ; 
while upward from the river, by a long and gentle 
ascent, rises the principal street, which is very bright 
and cheerful in its physiognomy, and adorned with 
shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of London, 
though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise 
side-streets and cross-streets, many of which are bor- 
dered with the beautiful Warwickshire elm, a most 
unusual kind of adornment for an English town ; and 
spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for 
stately groves, with foot-paths running beneath the 
lofty shade, and rooks cawing and chattering so high 
in the tree-tops that their voices get musical before 
reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in 
blocks and ranges, in which every separate tenement 
is a repetition of its fellow, though the architecture 
of the different ranges is sufficiently various. Some of 
them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness 
of arrangement. Then, on the outskirts of the town, 
there are detached villas, enclosed within that sepa- 
rate domain of high stone fence and embowered 
shrubbery which an Englishman so loves to build 
and plant around his abode, presenting to the public 
only an iron gate, with a gravelled carriage-drive wind- 
ing away towards the half-hidden mansion. Whether 
in street or suburb, Leamington may fairly be called 
beautiful, and, at some points, magnificent ; but by 
and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a some- 
what unreal finery : it is pretentious, though not 
glaringly so ; it has been built, with malice afore- 
thought, as a place of gentility and enjoyment. More- 
over, splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as 
they often are, there is a nameless something about 
them, betokening that they have not grown out of 



48 OUR OLD HOME. 

human hearts, but are the creations of a skilfully 
applied human intellect : no man has reared any one 
of them, whether stately or humble, to be his lifelong 
residence, wherein to bring up his children, who are 
to inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived 
lodging-houses, one and all, — the best as well as the 
shabbiest of them, — and therefore inevitably lack 
some nameless property that a home should have. 
This was the case with our own little snuggery in 
Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest; it had not 
grown out of anybody's individual need, but was built 
to let or sell, and was therefore like a ready-made 
garment, — a tolerable fit, but only tolerable. 

All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are 
adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names 
that I have found anywhere in England, except, per- 
haps, in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that 
second-class gentility with which watering-places are 
chiefly populated. Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne 
Circus, Lansdowne Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick 
Street, Clarendon Street, the Upper and Lower Pa- 
rade : such are a few of the designations. Parade, 
indeed, is a well-chosen name for the principal street, 
along which the population of the idle town draws 
itself out for daily review and display. I only wish 
that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw 
off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, indi- 
vidualizing each character with a touch : the great 
people alighting from their carriages at the principal 
shop-doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian offi- 
cers drawn along in Bath-chairs; the comely, rather 
than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy 
bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter 
for a milkmaid than for a lady ; the moustached gen- 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 49 

tlemen with frogged surtouts and a military air ; the 
nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier 
than our own, and scampering on slenderer legs ; the 
sturdy figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all 
ages, but ever with the stamp of authenticity some- 
where about him. 

To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over 
my paper, purposing to write a descriptive paragraph 
or two about the throng on the principal Parade of 
Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch 
of the British out-of-door aspect on a morning walk 
of gentility ; but I find no personages quite sufficiently 
distinct and individual in my memory to supply the 
materials of such a panorama. Oddly enough, the 
only figure that comes fairly forth to my mind's eye 
is that of a dowager, one of hundreds whom I used to 
marvel at, all over England, but who have scarcely a 
representative among our own ladies of autumnal life, 
so thin, careworn, and frail, as age usually makes the 
latter. 

I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which 
English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late 
period of life; but (not to suggest that an American 
eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite ap- 
preciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it 
strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to be- 
come a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her 
physique goes, than anything that we Western people 
class under the name of woman. She has an awful 
ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser devel- 
opment of our few fat women, but massive with solid 
beef and streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling 
manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her 
as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks, 



50 OUR OLD HOME. 

her advance is elephantine. When she sits down, it 
is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, 
where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. 
She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her 
personality, to such a degree that you probably credit 
her with far greater moral and intellectual force than 
she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and 
stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, 
not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but 
because it seems to express so much well-founded self- 
reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, 
troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for 
trampling down a foe. Without anything positively 
salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly for- 
midable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a 
seventy-four-gun ship in time of peace ; for, while you 
assure yourself that there is no real danger, you can- 
not help thinking how tremendous would be her onset, 
if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to 
inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold 
— nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take care of 
herself than our slender-framed and haggard woman- 
kind ; but I have not found reason to suppose that 
the English dowager of fifty has actually greater 
courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our 
women of similar age, or even a tougher physical 
endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I sus- 
pect, only in society, and in the common routine of 
social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid 
in any exceptional strait that might call for energy 
outside of the conventionalities amid which she has 
grown up. 

You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and 
even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 5 I 

in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she 
invariably displays there, and all the other corre- 
sponding development, such as is beautiful in the 
maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an 
over-blown cabbage-rose as this. 

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must 
be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, 
whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly over- 
grown ; for an English maiden in her teens, though 
very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, 
to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and 
delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood 
shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow 
or other, our American girls often fail to adorn them- 
selves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity 
that the English violet should grow into such an out- 
rageously developed peony as I have attempted to 
describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband 
ought to be considered as legally married to all the 
accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his 
bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make 
her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it 
not a sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial 
bond cannot be held to include the three fourths of 
the wife that had no existence when the ceremony 
was performed ? And as a matter of conscience and 
good morals, ought not an English married pair to 
insist upon the celebration of a Silver Wedding at the 
end of twenty-five years, in order to legalize and 
mutually appropriate that corporeal growth of which 
both parties have individually come into possession 
since they were pronounced one flesh ? 

The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Leam- 
ington lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and 



52 OUR OLD HOME. 

in jaunts to places of note and interest, which are par- 
ticularly abundant in that region. The high-roads 
are made pleasant to the traveller by a border of 
trees, and often afford him the hospitality of a way- 
side bench beneath a comfortable shade. But a 
fresher delight is to be found in the foot-paths, which 
go wandering away from style to style, along hedges, 
and across broad fields, and through wooded parks, 
leading you to little hamlets of thatched cottages, 
ancient, solitary farm-houses, picturesque old mills, 
streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unex- 
pected, yet strangely familiar features of English 
scenery that Tennyson shows us in his idyls and 
eclogues. These bypaths admit the wayfarer into 
the very heart of rural life, and yet do not burden him 
with a sense of intrusiveness. He has a right to go 
whithersoever they lead him ; for, with all their shaded 
privacy, they are as much the property of the public 
as the dusty high-road itself, and even by an older 
tenure. Their antiquity probably exceeds that of the 
Roman ways ; the footsteps of the aboriginal Britons 
first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of in- 
tercourse between village and village has kept the 
track bare ever since. An American farmer would 
plough across any such path, and obliterate it with his 
hills of potatoes and Indian corn ; but here it is pro- 
tected by law, and still more by the sacredness that, 
inevitably springs up, in this soil, along the well- 
defined footprints of centuries. Old associations are 
sure to be fragrant herbs in English nostrils : we pull 
them up as weeds. 

I remember such a path, the access to which is from 
Lovers 1 Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elms on 
a high hill-top, whence there is a view of Warwick 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 53 

Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, 
though bedimmed with English mist. This particu- 
lar foot-path, however, is not a remarkably good 
specimen of its kind, since it leads into no hollows 
and seclusions, and soon terminates in a high-road. 
It connects Leamington by a short cut with the small 
neighboring village of Lillington, a place which im- 
presses an American observer with its many points of 
contrast to the rural aspects of his own country. The 
village consists chiefly of one row of contiguous 
dwellings, separated only by party-walls, but ill- 
matched among themselves, being of different heights, 
and apparently of various ages, though all are of an 
antiquity which we should call venerable. Some of 
the windows are leaden-framed lattices, opening on 
hinges. These houses are mostly built of gray stone ; 
but others, in the same range, are of brick, and one 
or two are in a very old fashion, — Elizabethan, or 
still older, — having a ponderous framework of oak, 
painted black, and filled in with plastered stone or 
bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak 
seems to be the more durable part of the structure. 
Some of the roots are covered with earthen tiles ; 
others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) with 
thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of 
grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What espe- 
cially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated 
space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards, 
broad-spreading shade-trees, which occur between our 
own village-houses. These English dwellings have 
no such separate surroundings ; they all grow to- 
gether, like the cells of a honey-comb. 

Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it 
by a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, 



54 OUR OLD HOME. 

as we should call it) of small old cottages, stuck one 
against another, with their thatched roofs forming a 
single contiguity. These, I presume, were the habi- 
tations of the poorest order of rustic , laborers ; and 
the narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the 
close neighborhood of the whole, gave the impression 
of a stifled, unhealthy atmosphere among the occu- 
pants. It seemed impossible that there should be a 
cleanly reserve, a proper self-respect among indi- 
viduals, or a wholesome unfamiliarity between fami- 
lies, where human life was crowded and massed into 
such intimate communities as these. Nevertheless, 
not to look beyond the outside, I never saw a prettier 
rural scene than was presented by this range of con- 
tiguous huts. For in front of the whole row was a 
luxuriant and well-trimmed hawthorn hedge, and be- 
longing to each cottage was a little square of garden- 
ground, separated from its neighbors by a line of the 
same verdant fence. The gardens were chockfull, not 
of esculent vegetables, but of flowers, familiar ones, 
but very bright-colored, and shrubs of box, some of 
which were trimmed into artistic shapes ; and I re- 
member, before one door, a representation of Warwick 
Castle, made of oyster-shells. The cottagers evidently 
loved the little nests in which they dwelt, and did 
their best to make them beautiful, and succeeded 
more than tolerably well, — so kindly did Nature 
help their humble efforts with its verdure, flowers, 
moss, lichens, and the green things that grew out of 
the thatch. Through some of the open doorways we 
saw plump children rolling about on the stone floors, 
and their mothers, by no means very pretty, but as 
happy-looking as mothers generally are ; and while we 
gazed at these domestic matters, an old woman rushed 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 55 

wildly out of one of the gates, upholding a shovel, on 
which she clanged and clattered with a key. At first 
we fancied that she intended an onslaught against 
ourselves, but soon discovered that a more dangerous 
enemy was abroad ; for the old lady's bees had 
swarmed, and the air was full of them, whizzing by 
our heads like bullets. 

Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, 
a green lane, overshadowed with trees, turned aside 
from the main road, and tended towards a square, 
gray tower, the battlements of which were just high 
enough to be visible above the foliage. Wending our 
way thitherward, we found the very picture and ideal 
of a country church and churchyard. The tower 
seemed to be of Norman architecture, low, massive, 
and crowned with battlements. The body of the 
church was of very modest dimensions, and the eaves 
so low that I could touch them with my walking-stick. 
We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and 
quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the 
consecration of many centuries, and keeping its sanc- 
tity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral. 
The nave was divided from the side aisles of the church 
by pointed arches resting on very sturdy pillars ? it 
was good to see how solemnly they held themselves to 
their age-long task of supporting that lowly roof. 
There was a small organ, suited in size to the vaulted 
hollow, which it weekly filled with religious sound. 
On the opposite wall of the church, between two win- 
dows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with an in- 
scription in black letters, — the only such memorial 
that I could discern, although many dead people doubt- 
less lay beneath the floor, and had paved it with their 
ancient tombstones, as is customary in old English 



56 OUR OLD HOME. 

churches. There were no modern painted windows, 
flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adornments, 
such as the present taste for mediaeval restoration 
often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the gray 
village-church. It is probably the worshipping-place 
of no more distinguished a congregation than the 
farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and 
cottages which I have just described. Had the lord 
of the manor been one of the parishioners, there would 
have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled 
high about, curtained, and softly cushioned, warmed 
by a fireplace of its own, and distinguished by heredi- 
tary tablets and escutcheons on the enclosed stone 
pillar. 

A well-trodden path led across the churchyard, and 
the gate being on the latch, we entered, and walked 
round among the graves and monuments. The latter 
were chiefly head-stones, none of which were very old, 
so far as was discoverable by the dates ; some, indeed, 
in so ancient a cemetery, were disagreeably new, with 
inscriptions glittering like sunshine, in gold letters. 
The ground must have been dug over and over again, 
innumerable times, until the soil is made up of what 
was once human clay, out of which have sprung suc- 
cessive crops of gravestones, that flourish their allotted 
time, and disappear, like the weeds and flowers in their 
briefer period. The English climate is very unfavor- 
able to the endurance of memorials in the open air. 
Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of 
aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred 
years of our own drier atmosphere, — so soon do the 
drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the sur- 
face of marble or freestone. Sculptured edges lose 
their sharpness in a year or two ; yellow lichens over- 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 57 

spread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is 
yet fresh upon some survivor's heart. Time gnaws 
an English gravestone with wonderful appetite ; and 
when the inscription is quite illegible, the sexton 
takes the useless slab away, and perhaps makes a 
hearthstone of it, and digs up the unripe bones which 
it ineffectually tried to memorialize, and gives the bed 
to another sleeper. In the Charter-Street burial- 
ground at Salem, and in the old graveyard on the 
hill at Ipswich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, 
with legible inscriptions on them, than in any English 
churchyard. 

And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it 
generally is to the long remembrance of departed 
people, has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with 
the records on certain monuments that lie horizon- 
tally in the open air. The rain falls into the deep 
incisions of the letters, and has scarcely time to be 
dried away before another shower sprinkles the flat 
stone again, and replenishes those little reservoirs. 
The unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find their way 
into the lettered furrows, and are made to germinate 
by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the 
English sky ; and by and by, in a year, or two years, 
or many years, behold the complete inscription — 

l^ere llgetfj tfje Botig, 

and all the rest of the tender falsehood — beauti- 
fully embossed in raised letters of living green, a 
bas-relief of velvet moss on the marble slab! It 
becomes more legible, under the skyey influences, 
after the world has forgotten the deceased, than 
when it was fresh from the stone-cutter's hands. 



58 OUR OLD HOME. 

It outlives the grief of friends. I first saw an 
example of this in Bebbington churchyard, in 
Cheshire, and thought that Nature must needs 
have had a special tenderness for the person (no 
noted man, however, in the world's history) so long 
ago laid beneath that stone, since she took such 
wonderful pains to "keep his memory green. 1 ' Per- 
haps the proverbial phrase just quoted may have had 
its origin in the natural phenomenon here described. 
While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monu- 
ment, which was elevated just high enough to be a 
convenient seat, I observed that one of the gravestones 
lay very close to the church, — so close that the drop- 
pings of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed as 
if the inmate of that grave had desired to creep under 
the church-wall. On closer inspection, we found an 
almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with diffi- 
culty made out this forlorn verse : — 

" Poorly lived, 
And poorly died, 
Poorly buried, 
And no one cried." 

It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and 
luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or 
more impressive ones ; at least, we found them im- 
pressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the 
inscription by scraping away the lichens from the 
faintly traced letters. The grave was on the shady 
and damp side of the church, endwise towards it, the 
head-stone being within about three feet of the foun- 
dation-wall ; so that, unless the poor man was a 
dwarf, he must have been doubled up to fit him into 
his final resting-place. No wonder that his epitaph 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 59 

murmured against so poor a burial as this! His name, 
as well as I could make it out, was Treeo, — John 
Treeo, I think, — and he died in 18 10, at the age of 
seventy-four. The gravestone is so overgrown with 
grass and weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens, 
and so crumbly with time and foul weather, that it is 
questionable whether anybody will ever be at the 
trouble of deciphering it again. But there is a quaint 
and sad kind of enjoyment in defeating (to such 
slight degree as my pen may do it) the probabilities 
of oblivion for poor John Treeo, and asking a little 
sympathy for him, half a century after his death, and 
making him better and more widely known, at least, 
than any other slumberer in Lillington churchyard : 
he having been, as appearances go, the outcast of 
them all. 

You find similar old churches and villages in all the 
neighboring country, at the distance of every two or 
three miles ; and I describe them, not as being rare, 
but because they are so common and characteristic. 
The village of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk 
of Leamington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as 
little disturbed by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. 
Jeph'son had never developed all those Parades and 
Crescents out of his magic well. I used to wonder 
whether the inhabitants had ever yet heard of rail- 
ways, or, at their slow rate of progress, had even 
reached the epoch of stage-coaches. As you ap- 
proach the village, while it is yet unseen, you observe 
a tall, overshadowing canopy of elm-tree tops, be- 
neath which you almost hesitate to follow the public 
road, on account of the remoteness that seems to 
exist between the precincts of this old-world com- 
munity and the thronged modern street out of which 



60 OUR OLD HOME. 

you have so recently emerged. Venturing onward, 
however, you soon find yourself in the heart of Whit- 
nash, and see an irregular ring of ancient rustic 
dwellings surrounding the village-green, on one side 
of which stands the church, with its square Norman 
tower and battlements, while close adjoining is the 
vicarage, made picturesque by peaks and gables. At 
first glimpse, none of the houses appear to be less 
than two or three centuries old, and they are of the 
ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, 
which give them the air of birds' nests, thereby assimi- 
lating them closely to the simplicity of Nature. 

The church-tower is mossy and much gnawed by 
time ; it has narrow loopholes up and down its front 
and sides, and an arched window over the low portal, 
set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and ir- 
regular, through which a bygone age is peeping out 
into the daylight. Some of those old, grotesque 
faces, called gargoyles, are seen on the projections of 
the architecture. The churchyard is very small, and 
is encompassed by a gray stone fence that looks as 
ancient as the church itself. In front of the tower, on 
the village-green, is a yew-tree of incalculable age, 
with a vast circumference of trunk, but a very scanty 
head of foliage ; though its boughs still keep some of 
the vitality which perhaps was in its early prime when 
the Saxon invaders founded Whitnash. A thousand 
years is no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a 
yew. We were pleasantly startled, however, by dis- 
covering an exuberance of more youthful life than we 
had thought possible in so old a tree ; for the faces of 
two children laughed at us out of an opening in the 
trunk, which had become hollow with long decay. 
On one side of the yew stood a framework of worm- 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 6 1 

eaten timber, the use and meaning of which puzzled 
me exceedingly, till I made it out to be the village- 
stocks : a public institution that, in its day, had 
doubtless hampered many a pair of shank-bones, now 
crumbling in the adjacent churchyard. It is not to 
be supposed, however, that this old-fashioned mode 
of punishment is still in vogue among the good people 
of Whitnash. The vicar of the parish has antiquarian 
propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks 
out of some dusty hiding-place, and set them up on 
their former site as a curiosity. 

I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon 
some characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, 
that shall convey to the reader the influence of hoar 
antiquity lingering into the present daylight, as I so 
often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only 
an American who can feel it ; and even he begins to 
find himself growing insensible to its effect, after a 
long residence in England. But while you are still 
new in the old country, it thrills you with strange 
emotion to think that this little church of Whitnash, 
humble as it seems, stood for ages under the Catholic 
faith, and has not materially changed since Wickcliffe's 
days, and that it looked as gray as now in Bloody 
Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers broke off 
the stone noses of those same gargoyles that are now 
grinning in your face. So, too, with the immemorial 
yew-tree : you see its great roots grasping hold of the 
earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that 
no effort of time can wrench them away ; and there 
being life in the old tree, you feel all the more as if a 
contemporary witness were telling you of the things 
that have been. It has lived among men, and been a 
familiar object to them, and seen them brought to be 



62 OUR OLD HOME. 

christened and married and buried in the neighboring 
church and churchyard, through so many centuries, 
that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty gen- 
erations of the Whitnash people can supply such 
knowledge. 

And, after all, what a weary life it must have been 
for the old tree ! Tedious beyond imagination! Such, 
I think, is the final impression on the mind of an 
American visitor, when his delight at finding some- 
thing permanent begins to yield to his Western love 
of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air 
of a spot where the forefathers and foremothers have 
grown up together, intermarried, and died, through a 
long succession of lives, without any intermixture of 
new elements, till family features and character are all 
run in the same inevitable mould. Life is there fossil- 
ized in its greenest leaf. The man who died yesterday 
or ever so long ago walks the village-street to-day, 
and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred 
years since, and must be buried again to-morrow under 
the same kindred dust that has already covered him 
half a score of times. The stone threshold of his 
cottage is worn away with his hob-nailed footsteps, 
shuffling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet 
to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our 
restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them 
tend always towards " fresh woods and pastures new." 
Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering 
on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening 
to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries in 
the gray Norman church, let us welcome whatever 
change may come, — change of place, social customs, 
political institutions, modes of worship, — trusting 
that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 63 

make room for better systems, and for a higher type 
of man to clothe his life in them, and to fling them 
off in turn. 

Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts 
growth and change as the law of his own national and 
private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the 
stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. 
The reason may be (though I should prefer a more 
generous explanation) that he recognizes the ten- 
dency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints 
and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of im- 
provement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy 
wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet 
change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. 
At a subsequent visit, looking more critically at the 
irregular circle of dwellings that surround the yew- 
tree and confront the church, I perceived that some 
of the houses must have been built within no long 
time, although the thatch, the quaint gables, and the 
old oaken framework of the others diffused an air of 
antiquity over the whole assemblage. The church it- 
self was undergoing repair and restoration, which is but 
another name for change. Masons were making patch- 
w r ork on the front of the tower, and were sawing a slab 
of stone and piling up bricks to strengthen the side- 
wall, or possibly to enlarge the ancient edifice by an 
additional aisle. Moreover, they had dug an immense 
pit in the churchyard, long and broad, and fifteen feet 
deep, two thirds of which profundity were discolored 
by human decay, and mixed up with crumbly bones. 
What this excavation was intended for I could nowise 
imagine, unless it were the very pit in which Long- 
fellow bids the "Dead Past bury its Dead," and 
Whitnash, of all places in the world, were going to 



64 OUR OLD HOME. 

avail itself of our poet's suggestion. If so, it must 
needs be confessed that many picturesque and de- 
lightful things would be thrown into the hole, and 
covered out of sight forever. 

The article which I am writing has taken its own 
course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country 
churches ; whereas I had purposed to attempt a de- 
scription of some of the many old towns — Warwick, 
Coventry, Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon — which lie 
within an easy scope of Leamington. And still an- 
other church presents itself to my remembrance. It 
is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course 
of a forenoon's ramble, and paused a little while to 
look at it for the sake of old Dr. Parr, who was once 
its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no 
public-house, no shop, no contiguity of roofs, (as in 
most English villages, however small,) but is merely 
an ancient neighborhood of farm-houses, spacious, 
and standing wide apart, each within its own precincts, 
and offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards, 
harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural 
plenty. It seemed to be a community of old settlers, 
among whom everything had been going on prosper- 
ously since an epoch beyond the memory of man ; 
and they kept a certain privacy among themselves, 
and dwelt on a cross-road at the entrance of which 
was a barred-gate, hospitably open, but still impressing 
me with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. 
After all, in some shady nook of those gentle War- 
wickshire slopes there may have been a denser and 
more populous settlement, styled Hatton, which I 
never reached. 

Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one 
that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick, I 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 65 

espied the church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which 
I have described, it had a low stone tower, square, 
and battlemented at its summit : for all these little 
churches seem to have been built on the same model, 
and nearly at the same measurement, and have even 
a greater family-likeness than the cathedrals. As 
I approached, the bell of the tower (a remarkably 
deep-toned bell, considering how small it was) flung 
its voice abroad, and told me that it was noon. The 
church stands among its graves, a little removed from 
the wayside, quite apart from any collection of houses, 
and with no signs of a vicarage ; it is a good deal 
shadowed by trees, and not wholly destitute of ivy. 
The body of the edifice, unfortunately, (and it is an 
outrage which the English churchwardens are fond 
of perpetrating,) has been newly covered with a 
yellowish plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy the 
aspect of antiquity, except upon the tower, which 
wears the dark gray hue of many centuries. The 
chancel-window is painted with a representation of 
Christ upon the Cross, and all the other windows are 
full of painted or stained glass, but none of it ancient, 
nor (if it be fair to judge from without of what ought 
to be seen within) possessing any of the tender 
glory that should be the inheritance of this branch of 
Art, revived from mediaeval times. I stepped over the 
graves, and peeped in at two or three of the windows, 
and saw the snug interior of the church glimmering 
through the many-colored panes, like a show of com- 
monplace objects under the fantastic influence of a 
dream : for the floor was covered with modern pews, 
very like what we may see in a New England meeting- 
house, though, I think, a little more favorable than 
those would be to the quiet slumbers of the Hatton 



66 OUR OLD HOME. 

farmers and their families. Those who slept under 
Dr. Parr's preaching now prolong their nap, I suppose, 
in the churchyard round about, and can scarcely have 
drawn much spiritual benefit from any truths that he 
contrived to tell them in their lifetime. It struck me 
as a rare example (even where examples are numerous) 
of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormous scholar, 
great in the classic tongues, and inevitably converting 
his own simplest vernacular into a learned language, 
should have been set up in this homely pulpit, and 
ordained to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to 
whom it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have 
spoken one available word. 

Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have been 
attempting to describe, I had a singular sense of hav- 
ing been there before. The ivy-grown English 
churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I 
beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from 
home, as the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, 
which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the frozen 
purgatory of my childhood. This was a bewildering, 
yet very delightful emotion, fluttering about me like a 
faint summer-wind, and filling my imagination with a 
thousand half-remembrances, which looked as vivid as 
sunshine, at a side-glance, but faded quite away when- 
ever I attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, 
the explanation of the' mystery was, that history, poetry, 
and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tourists, 
had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of the 
common objects of English scenery, and these, being 
long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insensibly 
taken their places among the images of things actually 
seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, that I 
almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 67 

not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a recollection 
in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter and 
fainter impress through several descents, to my own. 
I felt, indeed, like the stalwart progenitor in person, 
returning to the hereditary haunts after more than two 
hundred years, and finding the church, the hall, the 
farm-house, the cottage, hardly changed during his 
long absence, — the same shady by-paths and hedge- 
lanes, the same veiled sky, and green lustre of the 
lawns and fields, — while his own affinities for these 
things, a little obscured by disuse, were reviving at 
every step. 

An American is not very apt to love the English 
people, as a whole, on whatever length of acquaintance. 
I fancy that they would value our regard, and even re- 
ciprocate it in their ungracious way, if we could give 
it to them in spite of all rebuffs ; but they are beset 
by a curious and inevitable infelicity, which compels 
them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to con- 
sider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between them- 
selves and all other nationalities, especially that of 
America. They will never confess it ; nevertheless, 
it is as essential a tonic to them as their bitter ale. 
Therefore — and possibly, too, from a similar narrow- 
ness in his own character — an American seldom feels 
quite as if he were at home among the English people. 
If he do so, he has ceased to be an American. But it 
requires no long residence to make him love their 
island, and appreciate it as thoroughly as they them- 
selves do. For my part, I used to wish that we could 
annex it, transferring their thirty millions of inhabit- 
ants to some convenient wilderness in the great West, 
and putting half or a quarter as many of ourselves into 
their places. The change would be beneficial to both 



68 OUR OLD HOME. 

parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, are getting too 
nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenuated, unsubstan- 
tial, theoretic, and need to be made grosser. John 
Bull, on the other hand, has grown bulbous, long- 
bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, material, and, in a 
word, too intensely English. In a few more centuries 
he will be the earthliest creature that ever the earth saw. 
Heretofore Providence has obviated such a result by 
timely intermixtures of alien races with the old Eng- 
lish stock ; so that each successive conquest of Eng- 
land has proved a victory by the revivification and 
improvement of its native manhood. Cannot America 
and England hit upon some scheme to secure even 
greater advantages to both nations ? 



ABOUT WARWICK. 69 



ABOUT WARWICK. 

Between bright, new Leamington, the growth of 
the present century, and rusty Warwick, founded by 
King Cymbeline in the twilight ages, a thousand years 
before the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads, 
either of which may be measured by a sober-paced 
pedestrian in less than half an hour. 

One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the 
smart parades and crescents of the former town, — 
along by hedges and beneath the shadow of great 
elms, past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and way-side 
ale-houses, and through a hamlet of modern aspect, — 
and runs straight into the principal thoroughfare of 
Warwick. The battlemented turrets of the castle, 
embowered half-way up in foliage, and the tall, slender 
tower of St. Mary's Church, rising from among clus- 
tered roofs, have been visible almost from the com- 
mencement of the walk. Near the entrance of the town 
stands St. John's School-House, a picturesque old 
edifice of stone, with four peaked gables in a row, alter- 
nately plain and ornamented, and wide, projecting win- 
dows, and a spacious and venerable porch, all overgrown 
with moss and ivy, and shut in from the world by a 
high stone fence, not less mossy than the gabled front. 
There is an iron gate, through the rusty open-work of 
which you see a grassy lawn, and almost expect to 
meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of past 



70 OUR OLD HOME. 

generations, peeping forth from their infantile an- 
tiquity into the strangeness of our present life. I find 
a peculiar charm in these long-established English 
schools, where the school-boy of to-day sits side by 
side, as it were, with his great-grandsire, on the same 
old benches, and often, I believe, thumbs a later, but 
unimproved edition of the same old grammar or arith- 
metic. The new-fangled notions of a Yankee school- 
committee would madden many a pedagogue, and 
shake down the roof of many a time-honored seat of 
learning, in the mother-country. 

At this point, however, we will turn back, in order 
to follow up the other road from Leamington, which 
was the one that I loved best to take. It pursues a 
straight and level course, bordered by wide gravel- 
walks and overhung by the frequent elm, with here a 
cottage and there a villa, on one side a wooded planta- 
tion, and on the other a rich field of grass or grain, 
until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an arched 
bridge over the Avon. Its parapet is a balustrade 
carved out of freestone, into the soft substance of 
which a multitude of persons have engraved their 
names or initials, many of them now illegible, while 
others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh 
green moss. These tokens indicate a famous spot ; 
and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and 
shadow of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows 
that droop on either side into the water, we behold 
the gray magnificence of Warwick Castle, uplifting 
itself among stately trees, and rearing its turrets high 
above their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think 
the scene real, so completely do those machicolated 
towers, the long line of battlements, the massive 
buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out our 



ABOUT WARWICK. 7 1 

indistinct ideas of the antique time. It might rather 
seem as if the sleepy river (being Shakespeare's Avon, 
and often, no doubt, the mirror of his gorgeous visions) 
were dreaming now of a lordly residence that stood 
here many centuries ago ; and this fantasy is strength- 
ened, when you observe that the image in the tran- 
quil water has all the distinctness of the actual structure. 
Either might be the reflection of the other. Wher- 
ever Time has gnawed one of the stones, you see the 
mark of his tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflec- 
tion. Each is so perfect, that the upper vision seems 
a castle in the air, and the lower one an old strong- 
hold of feudalism, miraculously kept from decay in an 
enchanted river. 

A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from 
the bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has the 
effect of making the scene appear more entirely apart 
from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in 
the middle of the stream, — so that, if a cavalcade of 
the knights and ladies of romance should issue from the 
old walls, they could never tread on earthly ground, 
any more than we, approaching from the side of mod- 
ern realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain 
and theirs. Yet, if we seek to disenchant ourselves, 
it may readily be done. Crossing the bridge on which 
we stand, and passing a little farther on, we come to 
the entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, 
and hospitably open at certain hours to all curious 
pilgrims who choose to disburse half a crown or so 
toward the support of the earl's domestics. The sight 
of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splen- 
dors and rarities as a great English family necessarily 
gathers about itself, in its hereditary abode, and in 
the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten 



72 OUR OLD HOME. 

times as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle 
could be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the 
attendant has hurried you from end to end of the edi- 
fice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and exorcising 
each successive hall of its poetic glamour and witch- 
craft by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you 
will make the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle 
has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to 
linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and 
Guy's Tower in the dim English sunshine above, and 
in the placid Avon below, and still keep them as thoughts 
in your own mind, than climb to their summits, or touch 
even a stone of their actual substance. They will 
have all the more reality for you, as stalwart relics 
of immemorial time, if you are reverent enough to 
leave them in the intangible sanctity of a poetic 
vision. 

From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in 
front of the castle-gate, and soon enters the principal 
street of Warwick, a little beyond St. John's School- 
House, already described. Chester itself, most antique 
of English towns, can hardly show quainter architectural 
shapes than many of the buildings that border this 
street. They are mostly of the timber-and-plaster 
kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole 
chronology of various patchwork in their walls ; their 
low-browed door-ways open upon a sunken floor; 
their projecting stories peep, as it were, over one 
another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of 
peaked gables ; they have curious windows, break- 
ing out irregularly all over the house, some even in the 
roof, set in their own little peaks, opening lattice-wise, 
and furnished with twenty small panes of lozenge- 
shaped glass. The architecture of these edifices (a 



ABOUT WARWICK. 73 

visible oaken framework, showing the whole skeleton 
of the house, — as if a man's bones should be arranged 
on his outside, and his flesh seen through the inter- 
stices) is often imitated by modern builders, and with 
sufficiently picturesque effect. The objection is, that 
such houses, like all imitations of by-gone styles, have 
an air of affectation ; they do not seem to be built in 
earnest ; they are no better than playthings, or over- 
grown baby-houses, in which nobody should be ex- 
pected to encounter the serious realities of either birth 
or death. Besides, originating nothing, we leave no 
fashions for another age to copy, when we ourselves 
shall have grown antique. 

Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has 
overbrimmed, as it were, from the original settle- 
ment, being outside of the ancient wall. The street 
soon runs under an arched gateway, with a church or 
some other venerable structure above it, and admits 
us into the heart of the town. At one of my first visits, 
I witnessed a military display. A regiment of War- 
wickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, 
was going through its drill in the market-place ; and 
on the collar of one of the officers was embroidered 
the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cog- 
nizance of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. 
The soldiers were sturdy young men, with the simple, 
stolid, yet kindly, faces of English rustics, looking ex- 
ceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman- 
like carriage and appearance, the moment they were 
dismissed from drill. Squads of them were distributed 
everywhere about the streets, and sentinels were 
posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant, with 
a great key in his hand, (big enough to have been 
the key of the castle's main entrance when the gate 



74 OUR OLD HOME. 

was thickest and heaviest,) apparently setting a guard. 
Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find 
warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and 
commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of 
the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his 
retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this 
modern regiment. 

The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned 
aspect than the suburbs through which we approach 
it ; and the High Street has shops with modern plate- 
glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting 
as few projections to hang a thought or sentiment upon 
as if an architect of to-day had planned them. And, 
indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are perhaps 
new enough to stand unabashed in an American 
street ; but behind these renovated faces, with their 
monotonous lack of expression, there is probably the 
substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic 
exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem 
of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a 
skilful and fortunate adaptation of what such a people 
as ourselves would destroy. The new things are 
based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive 
a massive strength from their deep and immemorial 
foundations, though with such limitations and im- 
pediments as only an Englishman could endure. But 
he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his 
back ; and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens 
him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be 
rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting 
rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. 
In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently com- 
fortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better 
stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a 



ABOUT WARWICK. f$ 

spectacle which is by no means without its charm for 
a disinterested and unincumbered observer. 

When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or 
institution, appears in its pristine form, without any 
attempt at intermarrying it with modern fashions, an 
American cannot but admire the picturesque effect 
produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently 
dead-and-buried state of society into the actual pres- 
ent, of which he is himself a part. We need not go 
far in Warwick without encountering an instance of 
the kind. Proceeding westward through the town, 
we find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of nat- 
ural rock, hewn into something like architectural 
shape, and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which 
may well have been one of King Cymbeline's original 
gateways ; and on the top of the rock, over the arch- 
way, sits a small, old church, communicating with an 
ancient edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look 
down from a similar elevation on the side of the 
street. A range of trees half hides the latter estab- 
lishment from the sun. It presents a curious and 
venerable specimen of the timber-and-plaster style of 
building, in which some of the finest old houses in 
England are constructed; the front projects into 
porticos and vestibules, and rises into many gables, 
some in a row, and others crowning semi-detached 
portions of the structure ; the windows mostly open 
on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape 
and position ; a multiplicity of chimneys break through 
the roof at their own will, or, at least, without any 
settled purpose of the architect. The whole affair 
looks very old, — so old, indeed, that the front bulges 
forth, as if the timber framework were a little weary, 
at last, of standing erect so long ; but the state 



j6 OUR OLD HOME. 

of repair is so perfect, and there is such an indescribable 
aspect of continuous vitality within the system of this 
aged house, that you feel confident that there may \>e 
safe shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come, 
under its time-honored roof. And on a bench, slug- 
gishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the 
street of Warwick as from a life apart, a few old men 
are generally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on 
which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge 
representing the Bear and Ragged Staff. These 
decorated worthies are some of the twelve brethren 
of Leicester's Hospital, — a community which sub- 
sists to-day under the identical modes that were estab- 
lished for it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of 
course retains many features of a social life that has 
vanished almost everywhere else. 

The edifice itself dates from a much older period 
than the charitable institution of which it is now the 
home. It was the seat of a religious fraternity far 
back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry 
VIII. turned all the priesthood of England out-of- 
doors, and put the most unscrupulous of his favorites 
into their vacant abodes. In many instances, the 
old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so 
well, and built them on such a broad system of beauty 
and convenience, that their lay-occupants found it 
easy to convert them into stately and comfortable 
homes ; and as such they still exist, with something 
of the antique reverence lingering about them. The 
structure now before us seems to have been first 
granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who perhaps in- 
tended, like other men, to establish his household 
gods in the niches whence he had thrown down the 
images of saints, and to lay his hearth where an altar 



ABOUT WARWICK. J J 

had stood. But there was probably a natural reluc- 
tance in those days (when Catholicism, so lately 
repudiated, must needs have retained an influence 
over all but the most obdurate characters) to bring 
one's hopes of domestic prosperity and a fortunate 
lineage into direct hostility with the awful claims of 
the ancient religion. At all events, there is still a 
superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and a belief, that 
the possession of former Church-property has drawn 
a curse along with it, not only among the posterity of 
those to whom it was originally granted, but wherever 
it has subsequently been transferred, even if honestly 
bought and paid for. There are families, now inhabit- 
ing some of the beautiful old abbeys, who appear to 
indulge a species of pride in recording the strange 
deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that have oc- 
curred among their predecessors, and may be sup- 
posed likely to dog their own pathway down the ages 
of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in the 
beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a 
nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this 
kind, I cannot tell ; but it is certain that he speedily 
rid himself of the spoils of the Church, and that, 
within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the 
property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 
brother of the Earl of Warwick. He devoted the 
ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, endow- 
ing it with an ample revenue, and making it the per- 
petual home of twelve poor, honest, and war-broken 
soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either 
of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, 
or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their 
monkish dormitories and haunt the time-darkened 
corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life 



yS OUR OLD HOME. 

of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned 
cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges 
which the Earl of Leicester gave to the original 
twelve. He is said to have been a bad man in his 
day ; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good 
deed into what was to him a distant future. 

On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, 
there is the date, 1 57 1 ? and several coats-of-arms, 
either the Earl's or those of his kindred, and imme- 
diately above the door-way a stone sculpture of the 
Bear and Ragged Staff. 

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a 
quadrangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed 
the central part of a great family residence in Queen 
Elizabeth's time, and earlier. There can hardly be a 
more perfect specimen of such an establishment than 
Leicester's Hospital. The quadrangle is a sort of 
sky-roofed hall, to which there is convenient access 
from all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, 
with their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look 
into it from antique windows, and through open cor- 
ridors and galleries along the sides ; and there seems 
to be a richer display of architectural devices and 
ornaments, quainter carvings in oak, and more fan- 
tastic shapes of the timber framework, than on the 
side toward the street. On the wall opposite the 
arched entrance are the following inscriptions, com- 
prising such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed 
most essential for the daily observance of the com- 
munity : " pernor ail Mzn " — " Jtar 60B " — " potior 
tijc Ititlfi "— " ILoto tfjc Brotfjcrrioon " ; and again, as if 
this latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition 
among a household of aged people soured with the 
hard fortune of their previous lives, — " 2Se tontilg affee- 



ABOUT WARWICK. 79 

ttonco one to another." One sentence, over a door 
communicating with the Master's side of the house, 
is addressed to that dignitary, — " |i|e that ruleth ober 
men must be just." All these are charactered in old 
English letters, and form part of the elaborate orna- 
mentation of the house. Everywhere — on the walls, 
over windows and doors, and at all points where there 
is room to place them — appear escutcheons of arms, 
cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper 
colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with 
their splendor. One of these devices is a large image 
of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath, being the crest 
of the Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cog- 
nizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over 
and over, and over again and again, in a great variety 
of attitudes, at full-length and half-length, in paint 
and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and rounded 
image. The founder of the hospital was certainly 
disposed to reckon his own beneficence as among the 
hereditary glories of his race ; and had he lived and 
died a half-century earlier, he would have kept up an 
old Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve bedes- 
men to pray for the welfare of his soul. 

At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated 
on the bench outside of the edifice, looking down into 
the street; but they did not vouchsafe me a word, and 
seemed so estranged from modern life, so enveloped 
in antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to 
converse with them would have been like shouting 
across the gulf between our age and Queen Eliza- 
beth's. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found 
it quite solitary, except that a plain and neat old 
woman happened to be crossing it, with an aspect of 
business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman 



80 OUR OLD HOME. 

of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. 
Asking her if I could come in, she answered very 
readily and civilly that I might, and said that I was 
free to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I 
would not open the private doors of the brotherhood, 
as some visitors were in the habit of doing. Under 
her guidance, I went into what was formerly the great 
hall of the establishment, where King James I. had 
once been feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is 
commemorated by an inscription on the cobwebbed 
and dingy wall. It is a very spacious and barn-like 
apartment, with a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the 
rafters of which are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, 
but hardly visible in the duskiness that broods aloft. 
The hall may have made a splendid appearance, when 
it was decorated with rich tapestry, and illuminated 
with chandeliers, cressets, and torches glistening upon 
silver dishes, where King James sat at supper among 
his brilliantly dressed nobles ; but it has come to base 
uses in these latter days, — being improved, in Yankee 
phrase, as a brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar 
for the brethren's separate allotments of coal. 

The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned 
into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very hand- 
some, in its own obsolete style, and must be an ex- 
ceedingly comfortable place for the old people to 
lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inex- 
pedient to walk abroad. There are shrubs against 
the wall, on one side; and on another is a cloistered 
walk, adorned with stags' heads and antlers, and run- 
ning beneath a covered gallery, up to which ascends 
a balustraded staircase. In the portion of the edifice 
opposite the entrance-arch are the apartments of the 
Master; and looking into the window, (as the old 



ABOUT WARWICK. 8 1 

woman, at no request of mine, had specially informed 
me that I might,) I saw a low, but vastly comfortable 
parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether a 
luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense 
arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost 
from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up 
in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very 
diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant 
interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable 
surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good 
in former things, and eking out their imperfection 
with the results of modern ingenuity, the Master 
might lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered 
side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels 
made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained 
window reddened by a great blaze from within, and 
heard the bubbling and squeaking of something — 
doubtless very nice and succulent — that was being 
cooked at the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a 
whiff or two of the savory fragrance reached my 
nostrils ; at all events, the impression grew upon me 
that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest old 
domiciles in England. 

I was about to depart, when another old woman, 
very plainly dressed, but fat, comfortable, and with a 
cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in through the 
arch, and looked curiously at me. This repeated 
apparition of the gentle sex (though by no means 
under its loveliest guise) had still an agreeable effect 
in modifying my ideas of an institution which I had 
supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. 
She asked whether I wished to see the hospital, and 
said that the porter, whose office it was to attend to 
visitors, was dead, and would be buried that very day, 



82 OUR OLD HOME. 

so that the whole establishment could not conveniently 
be shown me. She kindly invited me, however, to 
visit the apartment occupied by her husband and her- 
self; so I followed her up the antique staircase, along 
the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where 
sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and 
saluted me with much courtesy. He seemed a very 
quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and ad- 
venture, and gray experience, such as I could have 
fancied in a palmer of ancient times, who might like- 
wise have worn a similar costume. The little room 
was carpeted and neatly furnished ; a portrait of its 
occupant was hanging on the wall ; and on a table 
were two swords crossed, — one, probably, his own 
battle-weapon, and the other, which I drew half out 
of the scabbard, had an inscription on the blade, pur- 
porting that it had been taken from the field of Water- 
loo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all 
the particulars of their housekeeping, and led me into 
the bedroom, which was in the nicest order, with a 
snow-white quilt upon the bed ; and in a little inter- 
vening room was a washing and bathing apparatus, — 
a convenience (judging from the personal aspect and 
atmosphere of such parties) seldom to be met with in 
the humbler ranks of British life. 

The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of 
somebody to talk with ; but the good woman availed 
herself of the privilege far more copiously than the 
veteran himself, insomuch that he felt it expedient to 
give her an occasional nudge with his elbow in her 
well-padded ribs. " Don't you be so talkative! " quoth 
he ; and, indeed, he could hardly find space for a 
word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. 
Her nimble tongue ran over the whole system of life 



ABOUT WARWICK. 83 

in the hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly 
stipend, (the amount of which she did not mention,) 
and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other 
advantages, free ; and, instead of being pestered with 
a great many rules, and made to dine together at a 
great table, they could manage their little household 
matters as they liked, buying their own dinners, and 
having them cooked in the general kitchen, and eating 
them snugly in their own parlors. "And," added she, 
rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, "with the 
Master's permission, they can have their wives to take 
care of them; and no harm comes of it; and what 
more can an old man desire ? " It was evident enough 
that the good dame found herself in what she con- 
sidered very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of 
small occupations to keep her from getting rusty and 
dull ; but the veteran impressed me as deriving far less 
enjoyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of 
change or hope of improvement, that had followed 
upon thirty years of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, 
too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a stranger's 
visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle 
for the stranger's curiosity ; for, if he chose to be mor- 
bid about the matter, the establishment was but an 
almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, 
and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's garment, with 
a silver badge on it that perhaps galled his shoulder. 
In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb, though 
quite in accordance with the manners of the Earl of 
Leicester's age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, 
and might fitly and humanely be abolished. 

A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to the 
hospital, and found a new porter established in office, 
and already capable of talking like a guide-book about 



84 OUR OLD HOME. 

the history, antiquities, and present condition of the 
charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren 
are selected from among old soldiers of good charac- 
ter, whose other resources must not exceed an income 
of five pounds ; thus excluding all commissioned offi- 
cers, whose half-pay would of course be more than 
that amount. They receive from the hospital an 
annuity of eighty pounds each, besides their apart- 
ments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abun- 
dance of ale, and a privilege at the kitchen-fire ; so 
that, considering the class from which they are taken, 
they may well reckon themselves among the fortunate 
of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested with po- 
litical rights, acquiring a vote for member of Parliament 
in virtue either of their income or brotherhood. On 
the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or 
conduct, they are subject to a supervision which the 
Master of the hospital might render extremely annoy- 
ing, were he so inclined ; but the military restraint 
under which they have spent the active portion of 
their lives makes it easier for them to endure the 
domestic discipline here imposed upon their age. The 
porter bore his testimony (whatever were its value) 
to their being as contented and happy as such a set 
of old people could possibly be, and affirmed that they 
spent much time in burnishing their silver badges, 
and were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star. 
These badges, by-the-by, except one that was stolen 
and replaced in Queen Anne^ time, are the very same 
that decorated the original twelve brethren. 

I have seldom met with a better guide than my 
friend the porter. He appeared to take a genuine 
interest in the peculiarities of the establishment, and 
yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could 



ABOUT WARWICK. 85 

the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To 
be sure, his knowledge and observation were confined 
to external things, but, so far, had a sufficiently exten- 
sive scope. He led me up the staircase and exhibited 
portions of the timber framework of the edifice that 
are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, 
and are still neither worm-eaten nor decayed ; and 
traced out what had been a great hall, in the days of 
the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled 
up with the apartments of the twelve brethren ; and 
pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an 
ancient religious style of art, but hardly visible amid 
the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to 
the chapel — the Gothic church which I noted several 
pages back — surmounting the gateway that stretches 
half across the street. Here the brethren attend daily 
prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest 
paper, with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The 
interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of 
no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of 
painted glass in the great eastern window, represent- 
ing — no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such 
cases — but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. 
Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his 
human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the 
Earl could have been such a hardened reprobate, 
after all. 

We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked 
down between its battlements into the street, a hun- 
dred feet below us ; while clambering half-way up 
were fox-glove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts 
of grass, that had rooted themselves into the rough- 
nesses of the stone foundation. Far around us lay 
a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a 



86 OUR OLD HOME. 

church-spire and noble country-seat, and several 
objects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, where 
the Puritans defeated Charles I., is in sight on the 
edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the 
house where Cromwell lodged on the night before 
the battle. Right under our eyes, and half-envelop- 
ing the town with its high-shouldering wall, so that 
all the closely compacted streets seemed but a precinct 
of the estate, was the Earl of Warwick's delightful 
park, a wide extent of sunny lawns, interspersed with 
broad contiguities of forest-shade. Some of the ce- 
dars of Lebanon were there, — a growth of trees in 
which the Warwick family take an hereditary pride. 
The two highest towers of the castle heave themselves 
up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a lordly 
manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part 
of which are slate-covered, (these are the modern 
houses,) and a part are coated with old red tiles, 
denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and 
sixty or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a 
considerable portion of the town, and doubtless anni- 
hilated many structures of a remote antiquity ; at 
least, there was a possibility of very old houses in the 
long past of Warwick, which King Cymbeline is said 
to have founded in the year one of the Christian era ' 
And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it. 
may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality 
than anything else that has occurred within the pres- 
ent field of our vision ; though this includes the scene 
of Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of 
those of the Round Table, to say nothing of the Bat- 
tle of Edge Hill. For perhaps it was in the landscape 
now under our eyes that Posthumus wandered with 
the King's daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and 



ABOUT WARWICK. 8? 

courageous Imogen, the tenderest and womanliest 
woman that Shakspeare ever made immortal in the 
world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so 
quietly by the gray castle, may have held their images 
in its bosom. 

The day, though it began brightly, had long been 
overcast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful 
drops upon us, besides that the east-wind was very 
chill ; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and 
went next into the garden, one side of which is shut 
in by almost the only remaining portion of the old 
city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is devoted to 
grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, 
in the centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase 
of Egyptian sculpture, that formerly stood on the top 
of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar for measuring the 
rise and fall of the River Nile. On the pedestal is a 
Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of 
Hatton being so close at hand) was probably often 
the Master's guest, and smoked his interminable pipe 
along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden, 
which lies adjacent, the lion 1 s share is appropriated to 
the Master, and twelve small, separate patches to the 
individual brethren, who cultivate them at their own 
judgment and by their own labor; and their beans 
and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than 
if they had received them directly from the dead hand 
of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest of their food. 
In the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the 
old men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like 
well to sit down among them there, and find out what 
is really the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. 
As for the old gentlemen themselves, they put me 
queerly in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the 



88 OUR OLD HOME. 

venerable personages whom I found so quietly at 
anchor there. 

The Masters residence, forming one entire side 
of the quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears 
an aspect at once stately and homely. It can hardly 
have undergone any perceptible change within three 
centuries ; but the garden, into which its old windows 
look, has probably put off a great many eccentricities 
and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped 
shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's 
reign threw down his rusty shears and took his 
departure. The present Master's name is Harris ; 
he is a descendant of the founder's family, a gentle- 
man of independent fortune, and a clergyman of the 
Established Church, as the regulations of the hospital 
require him to be. I know not what are his official 
emoluments ; but, according to all English precedent, 
an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held 
directly for the behoof of those who administer it, 
and perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the 
nominal beneficiaries ; and, in the case before us, the 
twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, 
the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all 
the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a dis- 
tant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of 
whom I really know nothing, except that the people 
under his charge bear all possible tokens of being 
tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them 
sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter 
bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge 
and his titbits. It is delightful to think of the good 
life which a suitable man, in the Master's position, 
has an opportunity to lead, — linked to time-honored 
customs, welded in with an ancient system, never 



ABOUT WARWICK. 89 

dreaming of radical change, and bringing all the 
mellowness and richness of the past down into these 
railway-days, which do not compel him or his com- 
munity to move a whit quicker than of yore. Every- 
body can appreciate the advantages of going ahead ; 
it might be well, sometimes, to think whether there is 
not a word or two to be said in favor of standing still, 
or going to sleep. 

From the garden we went into the kitchen, where 
the fire was burning hospitably, and diffused a genial 
warmth far and wide, together with the fragrance of 
some old English roast beef, which, I think, must at 
that moment have been done nearly to a turn. The 
kitchen is a lofty, spacious, and noble room, parti- 
tioned off round the fireplace, by a sort of semicircular 
oaken screen, or rather, an arrangement of heavy and 
high-backed settles, with an ever open entrance be- 
tween them, on either side of which is the omnipres- 
ent image of the Bear and Ragged Staff, three feet 
high, and excellently carved in oak, now black with 
time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The ponderous 
mantel-piece, likewise of carved oak, towers high 
towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty 
breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of 
the fireplace being positively so immense that I could 
compare it to nothing but the city gateway. Above 
its cavernous opening were crossed two ancient hal- 
berds, the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had 
fought under Leicester in the Low Countries ; and 
elsewhere on the walls were displayed several mus- 
kets, which some of the present inmates of the hospi- 
tal may have levelled against the French. Another 
ornament of the mantel-piece was a square of silken 
needlework or embroidery, faded nearly white, but 



90 OUR OLD HOME. 

dimly representing that wearisome Bear and Ragged 
Staff, which we should hardly look twice at, only that 
it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Rob- 
sart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenil worth 
Castle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman 
of our own. Certainly, no Englishman would be 
capable of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the 
kitchen-firelight glistens on a splendid display of 
copper flagons, all of generous capacity, and one of 
them about as big as a half-barrel ; the smaller ves- 
sels contain the customary allowance of ale, and the 
larger one is filled with that foaming liquor on four 
festive occasions of the year, and emptied amain by 
the jolly brotherhood. I should be glad to see them 
do it; but it would be an exploit fitter for Queen 
Elizabeth's age than these degenerate times. 

The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve breth- 
ren. In the daytime, they bring their little messes 
to be cooked here, and eat them in their own parlors ; 
but after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared 
and'swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, 
each with his tankard and his pipe, and hold high 
converse through the evening. If the Master be a fit 
man for his office, methinks he will sometimes sit 
down sociably among them ; for there is an elbow- 
chair by the fireside which it would not demean his 
dignity to fill, since it was occupied by King James 
at the great festival of nearly three centuries ago. 
A sip of the ale and a whiff of the tobacco-pipe would 
put him in friendly relations with his venerable house- 
hold ; and then we can fancy him instructing them by 
pithy apothegms and religious texts which were first 
uttered here by some Catholic priest and have im- 
pregnated the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes 



ABOUT WARWICK. 9 1 

round, it shall be of an elder coinage than Joe 
Millers, as old as Lord Bacon's collection, or as the 
jest-book that Master Slender asked for when he 
lacked small-talk for sweet Anne Page. No news 
shall be spoken of, later than the drifting ashore, on 
the northern coast, of some stern-post or figure-head, 
a barnacled fragment of one of the great galleons of 
the Spanish Armada. What a tremor would pass 
through the antique group, if a damp newspaper 
should suddenly be spread to dry before the fire! 
They would feel as if either that printed sheet or 
they themselves must be an unreality. What a mys- 
terious awe, if the shriek of the railway-train, as it 
reaches the Warwick station, should ever so faintly 
invade their ears ! Movement of any kind seems 
inconsistent with the stability of such an institution. 
Nevertheless, I trust that the ages will carry it along 
with them ; because it is such a pleasant kind of 
dream for an American to find his way thither, and 
behold a piece of the sixteenth century set into our 
prosaic times, and then to depart, and think of its 
arched door-way as a spell-guarded entrance which 
will never be accessible or visible to him any more. 
Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands 
the great church of St. Mary's : a vast edifice, indeed, 
and almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who 
pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a 
poor style of architecture, though designed (or, at 
least, extensively restored) by Sir Christopher Wren ; 
but I thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and 
elaborate windows, its tall towers, its immense length, 
and (for it was long before I outgrew this American- 
ism, the love of an old thing merely for the sake of 
its age) the tinge of gray antiquity over the whole. 



92 OUR OLD HOME. 

Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock 
struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and imme- 
diately some chimes began to play, and kept up their 
resounding music for five minutes, as measured by the 
hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, 
as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbe- 
coming freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, 
and solemn church ; although I have seen an old-fash- 
ioned parlor-clock that did precisely the same thing, 
in its small way. 

The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp 
(or, as the English, who delight in vulgarizing their 
fine old Norman names, call it, the Beechum) Chapel, 
where the Earls of Warwick and their kindred have 
been buried, from four hundred years back till within 
a recent period. It is a stately and very elaborate 
chapel, with a large window of ancient painted glass, 
as perfectly preserved as any that I remember seeing 
in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here 
are several monuments with marble figures recumbent 
upon them, representing the Earls in their knightly 
armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court-finery 
of their day, looking hardly stififer in stone than they 
must needs have been in their starched linen and em- 
broidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen 
Elizabeth's time, the benefactor of the hospital, reclines 
at full length on the tablet of one of these tombs, side 
by side with his Countess, — not Amy Robsart, but a 
lady who (unless I have confused the story with some 
other mouldy scandal) is said to have avenged poor 
Amy's murder by poisoning the Earl himself. Be that 
as it may, both figures, and especially the Earl, look 
like the very types of ancient Honor and Conjugal 
Faith. In consideration of his long-enduring kind- 



ABOUT WARWICK. 93 

ness to the twelve brethren, I cannot consent to believe 
him as wicked as he is usually depicted ; and it seems 
a marvel, now that so many well-established historical 
verdicts have been reversed, why some enterprising 
writer does not make out Leicester to have been the 
pattern nobleman of his age. 

In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memo- 
rial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of War- 
wick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly ornamented 
altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a 
knight in gilded armor, most admirably executed : for 
the sculptors of those days had wonderful skill in their 
own style, and could make so life-like an nnage^ of a 
warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a trumpet were 
sounded over his tomb, you would expect him to start 
up and handle his sword. The Earl whom we now 
speak of, however, has slept soundly in spite of a more 
serious disturbance than any blast of a trumpet, unless 
it were the final one. Some centuries after his death, 
the floor of the chapel fell down and broke open the 
stone coffin in which he was buried ; and among the 
fragments appeared the anciently entombed Earl of 
Warwick, with the color scarcely faded out of his 
cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other respects 
looking as natural as if he had died yesterday. But 
exposure to the atmosphere appeared to begin and 
finish the long-delayed process of decay in a moment, 
causing him to vanish like a bubble ; so that, almost 
before there had been time to wonder at him, there 
was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save his hair. 
This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize of, 
and braided it into rings and brooches for their own 
adornment ; and thus, with a chapel and a ponderous 
tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, this great 



94 OUR OLD HOME. 

nobleman could not help being brought untimely to 
the light of day, nor even keep his lovelocks on his 
skull after he had so long done with love. There 
seems to be a fatality that disturbs people in their 
sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to ren- 
der them magnificent and impregnable, — as witness 
the builders of the Pyramids, and Hadrian, Augustus, 
and the Scipios, and most other personages whose 
mausoleums have been conspicuous enough to attract 
the violator ; and as for dead men's hair, I have seen 
a lock of King Edward the Fourth's, of a reddish- 
brown color, which perhaps was once twisted round 
the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. 

The direct lineage of the renowned characters that 
lie buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. 
The earldom is now held by the Grevilles, descendants 
of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamen- 
tary War; and they have recently (that is to say, 
within a century) built a burial-vault on the other 
side of the church, calculated (as the sexton assured 
me, with a nod as if he were pleased) to afford suit- 
able and respectful accommodation to as many as four- 
score coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not 
call them " caskets " ! — a vile modern phrase, which 
compels a person of sense and good taste to shrink 
more disgustfully than ever before from the idea of 
being buried at all. But as regards those eighty cof- 
fins, only sixteen have as yet been contributed ; and 
it may be a question with some minds, not merely 
whether the Grevilles will hold the earldom of War- 
wick until the full number shall be made up, but 
whether earldoms and all manner of lordships will 
not have faded out of England long before those 
many generations shall have passed from the castle 



ABOUT WARWICK. 95 

to the vault. I hope not. A titled and landed aris- 
tocracy, if anywise an evil and an incumbrance, is so 
only to the nation which is doomed to bear it on its 
shoulders ; and an American, whose sole relation to 
it is to admire its picturesque effect upon society, ought 
to be the last man to quarrel with what affords him so 
much gratuitous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conserva- 
tive as England is, and though I scarce ever found an 
Englishman who seemed really to desire change, there 
was continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old 
foundations of things were crumbling away. Some 
time or other, — by no irreverent effort of violence, 
but, rather, in spite of all pious efforts to uphold a 
heterogeneous pile of institutions that will have out- 
lasted their vitality, — at some unexpected moment, 
there must come a terrible crash. The sole reason 
why I should desire it to happen in my day is, that I 
might be there to see ! But the ruin of my own coun- 
try is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness ; and 
that immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the 
faith that there is a national lifetime of a thousand 
years in us yet) would serve any man well enough as 
his final spectacle on earth. 

If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little me- 
morial of Warwick he had better go to an Old Curi- 
osity Shop in the High Street, where there is a vast 
quantity of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and 
many of them so pretty and ingenious that you wonder 
how they came to be thrown aside and forgotten. As 
regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but does 
not improve ; it appears to me, indeed, that there 
have been epochs of far more exquisite fancy than the 
present one, in matters of personal ornament, and 
such delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room 



g6 OUR OLD HOME. 

table, a mantel-piece, or a whatnot. The shop in 
question is near the East Gate, but is hardly to be 
found without careful search, being denoted only by 
the name of " Redfern," painted not very con- 
spicuously in the top-light of the door. Immediately 
on entering, we find ourselves among a confusion of 
old rubbish and valuables, ancient armor, historic 
portraits, ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly 
clocks, hideous old china, dim looking-glasses in 
frames of tarnished magnificence, — a thousand ob- 
jects of strange aspect, and others that almost frighten 
you by their likeness in unlikeness to things now in 
use. It is impossible to give an idea of the variety of 
articles, so thickly strewn about that we can scarcely 
move without overthrowing some great curiosity with 
a crash, or sweeping away some small one hitched to 
our sleeves. Three stories of the entire house are 
crowded in like manner. The collection, even as we 
see it exposed to view, must have been got together 
at great cost ; but the real treasures of the establish- 
ment lie in secret repositories, whence they are not 
likely to be drawn forth at an ordinary summons ; 
though, if a gentleman with a competently long purse 
should call for them, I doubt not that the signet-ring 
of Joseph's friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's 
leading-staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of 
Buckingham, (all of which I have seen,) or any other 
almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. 
Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, 
Venetian wine-glasses, (which burst when poison is 
poured into them, and therefore must not be used for 
modern wine-drinking,) jasper-handled knives, painted 
SeVres tea-cups, — in short, there are all sorts of 
things that a virtuoso ransacks the world to discover. 



ABOUT WARWICK. 97 

It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in 
Mr. Redfern's shop than to keep the money in one's 
pocket ; but, for my part, I contented myself with 
buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantastically 
shaped, and got it at all the more reasonable rate be- 
cause there happened to be no legend attached to it. 
I could supply any deficiency of that kind at much less 
expense than regilding the spoon ! 



98 OUR OLD HOME. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

From Leamington to Stratford-on-Avon the distance 
is eight or nine miles, over a road that seemed to me 
most beautiful. Not that I can recall any memorable 
peculiarities ; for the country, most of the way, is a suc- 
cession of the gentlest swells and subsidences, affording 
wide and far glimpses of champaign scenery here and 
there, and sinking almost to a dead level as we draw 
near Stratford. Any landscape in New England, even 
the tamest, has a more striking outline, and besides 
would have its blue eyes open in those lakelets that we 
encounter almost from mile to mile at home, but of which 
the Old Country is utterly destitute ; or it would smile 
in our faces through the medium of the wayside brooks 
that vanish under a low stone arch on one side of the 
road, and sparkle out again on the other. Neither of 
these pretty features is often to be found in an English 
scene. The charm of the latter consists in the rich 
verdure of. the fields, in the stately wayside trees and 
carefully kept plantations of wood, and in the old and 
high cultivation that has humanized the very sods by 
mingling so much of man's toil and care among them. 
To an American there is a kind of sanctity even in an 
English turnip-field, when he thinks how long that 
small square of ground has been known and recognized 
as a possession, transmitted from father to son, trodden 
often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 99 

savagery by old acquaintanceship with civilized eyes. 
The wildest things in England are more than half 
tame. The trees, for instance, whether in hedge-row, 
park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about 
them. They are never ragged; there is a certain de- 
corous restraint in the freest outspread of their branches, 
though they spread wider than any self-nurturing 
tree ; they are tall, vigorous, bulky, with a look of 
age-long life, and a promise of more years to come, 
all of which will bring them into closer kindred with 
the race of man. Somebody or other has known them 
from the sapling upward ; and if they endure long 
enough, they grow to be traditionally observed and 
honored, and connected with the fortunes of old fami- 
lies, till, like Tennyson's Talking Oak, they babble 
with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can under- 
stand them. 

An American tree, however, if it could grow in fair 
competition with an English one of similar species, 
would probably be the more picturesque object of the 
two. The Warwickshire elm has not so beautiful a 
shape as those that overhang our village street ; and 
as for the redoubtable English oak, there is a certain 
John Bullism in its figure, a compact rotundity of foli- 
age, a lack of irregular and various outline, that make 
it look wonderfully like a gigantic cauliflower. Its 
leaf, too, is much smaller than that of most varieties 
of American oak ; nor do I mean to doubt that the 
latter, with free leave to grow, reverent care and culti- 
vation, and immunity from the axe, would live out its 
centuries as sturdily as its English brother, and prove 
far the nobler and more majestic specimen of a tree at 
the end of them. Still, however one's Yankee patri- 
otism may struggle against the admission, it must be 



100 OUR OLD HOME. 

owned that the trees and other objects of an English 
landscape take hold of the observer by numberless 
minute tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as 
we choose, we never find in an American scene. The 
parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the 
tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth 
observing than the boughs and foliage ; a verdant 
mossiness coats it all over ; so that it looks almost as 
green as the leaves ; and often, moreover, the stately 
stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping 
and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistle- 
toe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture 
and never too fervid sunshine, and supporting them- 
selves by the old tree's abundant strength. We call 
it a parasitical vegetation ; but, if the phrase imply 
any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this beauti- 
ful affection and relationship which exist in England 
between one order of plants and another : the strong 
tree being always ready to give support to the trail- 
ing shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own 
heart, if it crave such food ; and the shrub, on its part, 
repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of 
beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree's 
lofty strength. No bitter winter nips these tender 
little sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of 
them ; and therefore they outlast the longevity of the 
oak, and, if the woodman permitted, would bury it in 
a green grave, when all is over. 

Should there be nothing else along the road to look 
at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the 
eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, 
the heart of an American. We often set out hedges in 
our own soil, but might as well set out figs or pine- 
apples and expect to gather fruit of them. Something 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 101 

grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ; but 
it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation that 
is accumulated into the English original, in which a 
botanist would find a thousand shrubs and gracious 
herbs that the hedge-maker never thought of planting 
there. Among them, growing wild, are many of the 
kindred blossoms of the very flowers which our pilgrim 
fathers brought from England, for the sake of their 
simple beauty and home-like associations, and which 
we have ever since been cultivating in gardens. There 
is not a softer trait to be found in the character of 
those stern men than that they should have been sen- 
sible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres 
of their rugged hearts, and have felt the necessity of 
bringing them over sea and making them hereditary 
in the new land, instead of trusting to what rarer beauty 
the wilderness might have in store for them. 

Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone 
fence (such as, in America, would keep itself bare and 
unsympathizing till the end of time) is sure to be 
covered with the small handiwork of Nature ; that 
careful mother lets nothing go naked there, and, if she 
Cannot provide clothing, gives at least embroidery. 
No sooner is the fence built than she adopts and 
adorns it as a part of her original plan, treating the 
hard, uncomely construction as if it had all along been 
a favorite idea of her own. A little sprig of ivy may be 
seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging 
fast with its many feet to the rough surface ; a tuft of 
grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a 
pinch or two of wayside dust has been moistened into 
nutritious soil for it ; a small bunch of fern grows in 
another crevice ; a deep, soft, verdant moss spreads 
itself along the top and over all the available inequali- 



102 OUR OLD HOME, 

ties of the fence ; and where nothing else will grow, 
lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones and varie- 
gate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and 
red. Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along 
the base of the stone wall, and takes away the hard- 
ness of its outline ; and in due time, as the upshot of 
these apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recog- 
nize that the beneficent Creator of all things, working 
through His handmaiden whom we call Nature, has 
deigned to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness even 
with so earthly an institution as a boundary fence. 
The clown who wrought at it little dreamed what fel- 
low-laborer he had. 

The English should send us photographs of por- 
tions of the trunks of trees, the tangled and various 
products of a hedge, and a square foot of an old wall. 
They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. 
Their artists, especially of the later school, sometimes 
toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen 
the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed 
better, with Tennyson at their head, and often pro* 
duce ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness 
of touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate 
artfully impels them : for, as regards grandeur, there 
are loftier scenes in many countries than the best 
that England can show ; but, for the picturesqueness 
of the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom 
and sunshine, there is no scenery like it anywhere. 

In the foregoing paragraphs I have strayed away 
to a long distance from the road to Stratford-on- 
Avon ; for I remember no such stone fences as I have 
been speaking of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in 
England, except among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, 
and the rough and hilly countries to the north of it. 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 103 

Hedges there were along my road, however, and 
broad, level fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of 
ancient date, — from the roof of one of which the 
occupant was tearing away the thatch, and showing 
what an accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldiness, roots 
of weeds, families of mice, swallows' nests, and hordes 
of insects, had been deposited there since that old 
straw was new. Estimating its antiquity from these 
tokens, Shakspeare himself, in one of his morning 
rambles out of his native town, might have seen the 
thatch laid on ; at all events, the cottage-walls were 
old enough to have known him as a guest. A few 
modern villas were also to be seen, and perhaps there 
were mansions of old gentility at no great distance, 
but hidden among trees ; for it is a point of English 
pride that such houses seldom allow themselves to 
be visible from the high-road. In short, I recollect 
nothing specially remarkable along the way, nor in 
the immediate approach to Stratford ; and yet the 
picture of that June morning has a glory in my 
memory, owing chiefly, I believe, to the charm of 
the English summer-weather, the really good days 
of which are the most delightful that mortal man can 
ever hope to be favored with. Such a genial warmth! 
A little too warm, it might be, yet only to such a de- 
gree as to assure an American (a certainty to which 
he seldom attains till attempered to the customary 
austerity of an English summer-day) that he was 
quite warm enough. And after all, there was an un- 
querable freshness in the atmosphere, which every lit- 
tle movement of a breeze shook over me like a dash 
of the ocean-spray. Such days need bring us no 
other happiness than their own light and tempera- 
ture. No doubt, I could not have enjoyed it so 



104 0UR 0LD HOME. 

exquisitely, except that there must be still latent in 
us Western wanderers (even after an absence of two 
centuries and more), an adaptation to the English 
climate which makes us sensible of a motherly kind- 
ness in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us with 
delight at its more lavish smiles. 

The spire of Shakspeare's church — the Church of 
the Holy Trinity — begins to show itself among the 
trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see 
the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-look- 
ing houses of modern date ; and the streets being 
quite level, you are struck and surprised by nothing 
so much as the tameness of the general scene ; as 
if Shakspeare's genius were vivid enough to have 
wrought pictorial splendors in the town where he was 
born. Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets 
your eye, endowed with the individuality that belongs 
only to the domestic architecture of times gone by ; 
the house seems to have grown out of some odd 
quality in its inhabitant, as a sea-shell is moulded 
from within by the character of its inmate ; and hav- 
ing been built in a strange fashion, generations ago, it 
has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as 
old humorists are apt to do. Here, too, (as so often 
impressed me in decayed English towns,) there ap- 
peared to be a greater abundance of aged people 
wearing small-clothes and leaning on sticks than you 
could assemble on our side of the water by sounding 
a trumpet and proclaiming a reward for the most ven- 
erable. I tried to account for this phenomenon by 
several theories : as, for example, that our new towns 
are unwholesome for age and kill it off unseasonably ; 
or that our old men have a subtile sense of fitness, and 
die of their own accord rather than live in an unseemly 






A GIFTED WOMAN. 105 

contrast with youth and novelty : but the secret may 
be, after all, that hair-dyes, false teeth, modern arts 
of dress, and other contrivances of a skin-deep youth- 
fulness, have not crept into these antiquated English 
towns, and so people grow old without the weary 
necessity of seeming younger than they are. 

After wandering through two or three streets, I 
found my way to Shakspeare's birthplace, which is 
almost a smaller and humbler house than any descrip- 
tion can prepare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably 
does an august inhabitant make his abode palatial to 
our imaginations, receiving his guests, indeed, in a 
castle in the air, until we unwisely insist on meeting 
him among the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth. 
The portion of the edifice with which Shakspeare had 
anything to do is hardly large enough, in the base- 
ment, to contain the butcher's stall that one of his 
descendants kept, and that still remains there, win- 
dowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its hacked counter, 
which projects into the street under a little penthouse- 
roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. 

The upper half of the door was open, and, on my 
rapping at it, a young person in black made her ap- 
pearance and admitted me : she was not a menial, 
but remarkably genteel (an American characteristic) 
for an English girl, and was probably the daughter of 
the old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. 
This lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of 
stone, which may have been rudely squared when the 
house was new, but are now all cracked, broken, and 
disarranged in a most unaccountable way. One does 
not see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length 
of time, should have so smashed these heavy stones j 
it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, 



106 OUR OLD HOME. 

which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down 
again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but 
wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such as 
the most poetical imagination would find it difficult to 
idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, 
a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect ; it has a 
great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family 
under the blackened opening of the chimney, and an 
immense passage-way for the smoke, through which 
Shakspeare may have seen the blue sky by day and 
the stars glimmering down at him by night. It is 
now a dreary spot where the long-extinguished embers 
used to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a 
quarter part of the hearth, might still do much towards 
making the old kitchen cheerful. But we get a de- 
pressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre kind of life 
that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where 
this room seems to have been the gathering-place of 
the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retire- 
ment, but old and young huddling together cheek by 
jowl. What a hardy plant was Shakspeare's genius, 
how fatal its development, since it could not be 
blighted in such an atmosphere! It only brought 
human nature the closer to him, and put more unc- 
tuous earth about his roots. 

Thence I was ushered up-stairs to the room in which 
Shakspeare is supposed to have been born ; though, if 
you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find 
the shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most 
other points of his mysterious life. It is the cham- 
ber over the butcher's shop, and is lighted by one 
broad window containing a great many small, irregu- 
lar panes of glass. The floor is made of planks, very 
rudely hewn, and fitting together with little neatness ; 



A GIFTED WOMAN. \0J 

the naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room 
and overhead, bear the original marks of the builder's 
broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth 
off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to 
the smallness of the space enclosed by these illustrious 
walls, — a circumstance more difficult to accept, as 
regards places that we have heard, read, thought, and 
dreamed much about, than any other disenchanting 
particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces — per- 
haps seven or eight — take us from end to end of it. 
So low it is, that I could easily touch the ceiling, and 
might have done so without a tiptoe-stretch, had it 
been a good deal higher ; and this humility of the 
chamber has tempted a vast multitude of people to 
write their names overhead in pencil. Every inch of 
the side-walls, even into the obscurest nooks and 
corners, is covered with a similar record ; all the 
window-panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond 
signatures, among which is said to be that of Walter 
Scott ; but so many persons have sought to immortal- 
ize themselves in close vicinity to his name that I 
really could not trace him out. Methinks it is strange 
that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little 
identities, in such situations, instead of thrusting them 
forward into the dazzle of a great renown, where, if 
noticed, they cannot but be deemed impertinent. 

This room, and the entire house, so far as I saw it, 
•are whitewashed and exceedingly clean ; nor is there 
the aged, musty smell with which old Chester first 
made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an 
American of his excessive predilection for antique 
residences. An old lady, who took charge of me up- 
stairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, 
and talked with somewhat formidable knowledge and 



108 OUR OLD HOME. 

appreciative intelligence about Shakspeare. Arranged 
on a table and in chairs were various prints, views of 
houses and scenes connected with Shakspeare's mem- 
ory, together with editions of his works and local pub- 
lications about his home and haunts, from the sale of 
which this respectable lady perhaps realizes a hand- 
some profit. At any rate, I bought a good many of 
them, conceiving that it might be the civilest way of 
requiting her for her instructive conversation and the 
trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me 
a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) 
to offer a downright fee to the lady-like girl who had 
admitted me; but I swallowed my delicate scruples 
with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, so far 
as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, 
nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any per- 
son with whom he has occasion to speak a word in 
England. 

I should consider it unfair to quit Shakspeare^ 
house without the frank acknowledgment that I was 
conscious of not the slightest emotion while viewing 
it, nor any quickening of the imagination. This has 
often happened to me in my visits to memorable 
places. Whatever pretty and apposite reflections I 
may have made upon the subject had either occurred 
to me before I ever saw Stratford, or have been elab- 
orated since. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to think 
that I have seen the place ; and I believe that I can 
form a more sensible and vivid idea of Shakspeare as 
a flesh-and-blood individual now that I have stood on 
the kitchen-hearth and in the birth-chamber; but I 
am not quite certain that this power of realization is 
altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. The 
Shakspeare whom I met there took various guises, but 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 109 

had not his laurel on. He was successively the rogu- 
ish boy, — the youthful deer-stealer — the comrade of 
players, — the too familiar friend of Davenant's mother, 

— the careful, thrifty, thriven man of property, who 
came back from London to lend money on bond, and 
occupy the best house in Stratford, — the mellow, red- 
nosed, autumnal boon-companion of John a 1 Combe 

— and finally, (or else the Stratford gossips belied 
him,) the victim of convivial habits who met his death 
by tumbling into a ditch on his way home from a 
drinking-bout, and left his second-best bed to his 
poor wife 

I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what horrible 
impiety it is to remember these things, be they true 
or false. In either case, they ought to vanish out of 
sight on the distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a 
pure, white memory, even as a sail, though perhaps 
darkened with many stains, looks snowy white on the 
far horizon. But I draw a moral from these unworthy 
reminiscences and this embodiment of the poet, as sug- 
gested by some of the grimy actualities of his life. It 
is for the high interests of the world not to insist upon 
finding out that its greatest men are, in a certain lower 
sense, very much the same kind of men as the rest of 
us, and often a little worse ; because a common mind 
cannot properly digest such a discovery, nor ever know 
the true proportion of the great man's good and evil, 
nor how small a part of him it was that touched our 
muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral bewil- 
derment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what 
is best of him. When Shakspeare invoked a curse on 
the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps meant 
the larger share of it for him or them who should pry 
into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the 



IIO OUR OLD HOME. 

merits of the character that he wore in Stratford, when 
he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was 
imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from in- 
curring any part of the anathema in requital for the 
irreverent sentences above written! 

From Shakspeare's house, the next step, of course, 
is to visit his burial-place- The appearance of the 
church is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid 
a great green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises 
the spire, while the Gothic battlements and buttresses 
and vast arched windows are obscurely seen through 
the boughs. The Avon loiters past the churchyard, 
an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem to 
have been considering which way it should flow ever 
since Shakspeare left off paddling in it and gathering 
the large forget-me-nots that grow among its flags 
and water-weeds. 

An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the 
gate ; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he pre- 
ceded me to the church-porch, and rapped. I could 
have done it quite as effectually for myself; but it 
seems, the old people of the neighborhood haunt 
about the churchyard, in spite of the frowns and re- 
monstrances of the sexton, who grudges them the 
half-eleemosynary sixpence which they sometimes get 
from visitors. I was admitted into the church by a 
respectable-looking and intelligent man in black, the 
parish-clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer 
incumbency than his vicar, if all the fees which he 
handles remain in his own pocket. He was already 
exhibiting the Shakspeare monuments to two or three 
visitors, and several other parties came in while I was 
there. 

The poet and his family are in possession of what 



A GIFTED WOMAN. Ill 

may be considered the very best burial-places that 
the church affords. They lie in a row, right across 
the breadth of the chancel, the foot of each gravestone 
being close to the elevated floor on which the altar 
stands. Nearest to the side-wall, beneath Shakspeare's 
bust, is a slab bearing a Latin inscription addressed 
to his wife, and covering her remains ; then his own 
slab, with the old anathematizing stanza upon it ; then 
that of Thomas Nash, who married his grand-daughter; 
then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of his daughter 
Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah's own. Shak- 
speare's is the commonest-looking slab of all, being 
just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem used to 
be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, unless 
my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a crack 
across it, as if it had already undergone some such 
violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike the 
other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor 
am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on 
which it is absolutely determined to be Shakspeare's ; 
although, being in a range with those of his wife and 
children, it might naturally be attributed to him. But, 
then, why does his wife, who died afterwards, take 
precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust ? 
And where are the graves of another daughter and a 
son, who have a better right in the family-row than 
Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law? Might not one 
or both of them have been laid under the nameless 
stone? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakspeare's 
dust ; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave, 
(though the prohibition makes it tempting.) and shall 
let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must 
needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply 
that Shakspeare's grave was directly underneath it. 



112 OUR OLD HOME. 

The poet's bust is affixed to the northern wall of the 
church, the base of it being about a man's height, or 
rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The fea- 
tures of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike any 
portrait of Shakspeare that I have ever seen, and com- 
pel me to take down the beautiful, lofty-browed, and 
noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my 
mental portrait gallery. The bust cannot be said to 
represent a beautiful face or an eminently noble head ; 
but it clutches firmly hold of one's sense of reality and 
insists upon your accepting it, if not as Shakspeare the 
poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of Stratford, 
the friend of John a' Combe, who lies yonder in 
the corner. I know not what the phrenologists say 
to the bust. The forehead is but moderately devel- 
oped, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the 
skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are prominent 
almost beyond the penthouse of the brow ; the upper 
lip is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, 
unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, 
in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be 
foreshortened by being looked at from below. On the 
whole, Shakspeare must have had a singular rather 
than a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, 
with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted 
in maintaining an erroneous notion of his appearance, 
allowing painters and sculptors to foist their idealized 
nonsense on us all, instead of the genuine man. For 
my part, the Shakspeare of my mind's eye is hence- 
forth to be a personage of a ruddy English complexion, 
with a reasonably capacious brow, intelligent and 
quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly outward, 
a long, queer upper-lip, with the mouth a little unclosed 
beneath it, and cheeks considerably developed in the 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 113 

lower part and beneath the chin. But when Shak- 
speare was himself, (for nine-tenths of the time, 
according to all appearances, he was but the burgher 
of Stratford,) he doubtless shone through this dull 
mask and transfigured it into the face of an angel. 

Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of Shakspeare 
gravestones is the great east-window of the church, 
now brilliant with stained glass of recent manufacture. 
On one side of this window, under a sculptured arch 
of marble, lies a full-length marble figure of John a 1 
Combe, clad in what I take to be a robe of municipal 
dignity, and holding its hands devoutly clasped. It is 
a sturdy English figure, with coarse features, a type of 
ordinary man whom we smile to see immortalized in 
the sculpturesque material of poets and heroes ; but 
the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the 
old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim 
reception in the other world which ShakjSpeare's squib 
foreboded for him. By-the-by, till I grew somewhat 
familiar with Warwickshire pronunciation, I never 
understand that the point of those ill-natured lines 
was a pun. "'Oho! 1 quoth the Devil, ''tis my John 
a' Combe ! ' " — that is, " My John has come ! " 

Close to the poet's bust is a nameless, oblong, cubic 
tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of the 
fourteenth century. The church has other mural monu- 
ments and altar tombs, one or two of the latter uphold- 
ing the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their 
dames, very eminent and worshipful personages in their 
day, no doubt, but doomed to appear forever intrusive 
and impertinent within the precincts which Shakspeare 
has made his own. His renown is tyrannous, and 
suffers nothing else to be recognized within the scope 
of its material presence, unless illuminated by some 



114 0UR 0LD HOME. 

side-ray from himself. The clerk informed me that 
interments no longer take place in any part of the 
church. And it is better so ; for methinks a person 
of delicate individuality, curious about his burial-place, 
and desirous of six feet of earth for himself alone, 
could never endure to lie buried near Shakspeare, but 
would rise up at midnight and grope his way out of 
the church-door, rather than sleep in the shadow of 
so stupendous a memory. 

I should hardly have dared to add another to the 
innumerable descriptions of Stratford-on-Avon, if it 
had not seemed to me that this would form a fitting 
framework to some reminiscences of a very remarkable 
woman. Her labor, while she lived, was of a nature 
and purpose outwardly irreverent to the name of 
Shakspeare, yet, by its actual tendency, entitling her 
to the distinction of being that one of all his worship- 
pers who sought, though she knew it not, to place the 
richest and stateliest diadem upon his brow. We 
Americans, at least, in the scanty annals of our litera- 
ture, cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious 
exercise of noble faculties, which, indeed, if you look 
at the matter in one way, evolved only a miserable 
error, but, more fairly considered, produced a result 
worth almost what it cost her. Her faith in her 
own ideas was so genuine, that, erroneous as they 
were, it transmuted them to gold, or, at all events, 
interfused a large proportion of that precious and 
indestructible substance among the waste material 
from which it can readily be sifted. 

The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in Lon- 
don, where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex 
Gardens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle- 
aged, civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 1 1 5 

appeared to feel a personal kindness towards their 
lodger. I was ushered up two (and I rather believe 
three) pair of stairs into a parlor somewhat humbly fur- 
nished, and told that Miss Bacon would come soon. 
There were a number of books on the table, and, 
looking into them, 1 found that every one had some 
reference, more or less immediate, to her Shakspearian 
theory, — a volume of Raleigh's " History of the 
World," a volume of Montaigne, a volume of Lord 
Bacon's letters, a volume of Shakspeare's plays ; and 
on another table lay a large roll of manuscript, which 
I presume to have been a portion of her work. To 
be sure, there was a pocket-Bible among the books, 
but everything else referred to the one despotic idea 
that had got possession of her mind ; and as it had 
engrossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I 
have no doubt that she had established subtile con- 
nections between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt 
to be the case with solitary students, Miss Bacon prob- 
ably read late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne 
(it was Hazlitfs translation) and had been reading 
his journey to Italy a good while before she appeared. 
I had expected (the more shame for me, having no 
other ground of such expectation than that she was a 
literary woman) to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly 
personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by 
her aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and 
had a striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark 
eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she 
began to speak, and by-and-by a color came into her 
cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that 
she really was so ; she must have been beyond middle- 
age : and there was no unkindness in coming to that 
conclusion, because, making allowance for years and 



Il6 OUR OLD HOME. 

ill-health, 1 could suppose her to have been handsome 
and exceedingly attractive once. Though wholly 
estranged from society, there was little or no restraint 
or embarrassment in her manner : lonely people are 
generally glad to give utterance to their pent-up ideas, 
and often bubble over with them as freely as children 
with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell how it 
came about, but we immediately found ourselves tak- 
ing a friendly and familiar tone together, and began 
to talk as if we had known one another a very long 
while. A little preliminary correspondence had indeed 
smoothed the way, and we had a definite topic in the 
contemplated publication of her book. 

She was very communicative about her theory, and 
would have been much more so had I desired it ; but, 
being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I 
deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw 
her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a 
monomaniac ; these overmastering ideas about the au- 
thorship of Shakspeare's plays, and the deep political 
philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had 
completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the same 
time they had wonderfully developed her intellect, and 
made her what she could not otherwise have become. 
It was a very singular phenomenon : a system of phi- 
losophy growing up in this woman's mind without her 
volition, — contrary, in fact, to the determined resist- 
ance of her volition, — and substituting itself in the 
place of everything that originally grew there. To 
have based such a system on fancy, and unconsciously 
elaborated it for herself, was almost as wonderful as 
really to have found it in the plays. But, in a certain 
sense, she did actually find it there. Shakspeare has 
surface beneath surface, to an immeasurable depth, 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 117 

adapted to the plummet-line of every reader; his 
works present many phases of truth, each with scope 
large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever 
you seek in him you will surely discover, provided you 
seek truth. There is no exhausting the various inter- 
pretation of his symbols ; and a thousand years hence, 
a world of new readers will possess a whole library of 
new books, as we ourselves do, in these volumes old 
already. I had half a mind to suggest to Miss Bacon 
this explanation of her theory, but forbore, because 
(as I could readily perceive) she had as princely a 
spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, and would at once 
have motioned me from the room. 

I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the 
material evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, 
together with the key of the new philosophy, would 
be found buried in Shakspeare's grave. Recently, as I 
understood her, this notion had been somewhat modi- 
fied, and was now accurately defined and fully devel- 
oped in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. 
In Lord Bacon's letters, on which she laid her finger 
as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clue to 
the whole mystery. There were definite and minute 
instructions how to find a will and other documents 
relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, 
which were concealed (when and by whom she did 
not inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface 
of Shakspeare's gravestone. Thus the terrible pro- 
hibition to remove the stone was accounted for. The 
directions, she intimated, went completely and pre- 
cisely to the point, obviating all difficulties in the way 
of coming at the treasure, and even, if I remember 
right, were so contrived as to ward off any trouble- 
some consequences likely to ensue from the inter- 



Il8 OUR OLD HOME. 

ference of the parish-officers. All that Miss Bacon 
now remained in England for— indeed, the object for 
which she had come hither, and which had kept her 
here for three years past — was to obtain possession 
of these material and unquestionable proofs of the 
authenticity of her theory. 

She communicated all this strange matter in a low, 
quiet tone ; while, on my part, I listened as quietly, 
and without any expression of dissent. Controversy 
against a faith so settled would have shut her up at 
once, and that, too, without in the least weakening her 
belief in the existence of those treasures of the tomb ; 
and had it been possible to convince her of their in- 
tangible nature, I apprehend that there would have 
been nothing left for the poor enthusiast save to col- 
lapse and die. She frankly confessed that she could 
no longer bear the society of those who did not at 
least lend a certain sympathy to her views, if not fully 
share in them ; and meeting little'sympathy or none, 
she had now entirely secluded herself from the world. 
In all these years, she had seen Mrs. Farrar a few 
times, but had long ago given her up, — Carlyle once 
or twice, but not of late, although he had received her 
kindly; Mr. Buchanan, while minister in England, 
had once called on her, and General Campbell, our 
Consul in London, had met her two or three times on 
business. With these exceptions which she marked 
so scrupulously that it was perceptible what epochs 
they were in the monotonous passage of her days, she 
had lived in the profoundest solitude. She never 
walked out ; she suffered much from ill-health ; and 
yet, she assured me, she was perfectly happy. 

I could well conceive it; for Miss Bacon imagined 
herself to have received (what is certainly the greatest 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 119 

boon ever assigned to mortals) a high mission in the 
world, with adequate powers for its accomplishment ; 
and lest even these should prove insufficient, she had 
faith that special interpositions of Providence were 
forwarding her human efforts. This idea was con- 
tinually coming to the surface, during our interview. 
She believed, for example, that she had been provi- 
dentially led to her lodging-house and put in relations 
with the good-natured grocer and his family ; and, to 
say the truth, considering what a savage and stealthy 
tribe the London lodging-house keepers usually are, 
the honest kindness of this man and his household 
appeared to have been little less than miraculous. 
Evidently, too, she thought that Providence had 
brought me forward — a man somewhat connected 
with literature — at the critical juncture when she 
needed a negotiator with the booksellers ; and, on 
my part, though little accustomed to regard myself 
as a divine minister, and though I might even have 
preferred that Providence should select some other 
instrument, I had no scruple in undertaking to do 
what I could for her. Her book, as I could see by 
turning it over, was a very remarkable one, and 
worthy of being offered to the public, which, if wise 
enough to appreciate it, would be thankful for what 
was good in it and merciful to its faults. It was 
founded on a prodigious error, but was built up from 
that foundation with a good many prodigious truths. 
And, at all events, whether I could aid her literary 
views or no, it would have been both rash and im- 
pertinent in me to attempt drawing poor Miss Bacon 
out of her delusions, which were the condition on 
which she lived in comfort and joy, and in the exer- 
cise of great intellectual power. So I left her to 



120 OUR OLD HOME. 

dream as she pleased about the treasures of Shak- 
speare's tombstone, and to form whatever designs 
might seem good to herself for obtaining possession 
of them. I was sensible of a lady-like feeling of pro- 
priety in Miss Bacon, and a New-England orderliness 
in her character, and, in spite of her bewilderment, a 
sturdy common-sense, which I trusted would begin 
to operate at the right time, and keep her from any 
actual extravagance. And as regarded this matter 
of the tombstone, so it proved. 

The interview lasted above an hour, during which 
she flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable 
of any degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had 
met with in a very long while. Her conversation 
was remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one's own 
ideas and fantasies from the shy places where they 
usually haunt. She was indeed an admirable talker, 
considering how long she had held her tongue for 
lack of a listener, — pleasant, sunny and shadowy, 
often piquant, and giving glimpses of all a woman's 
various and readily changeable moods and humors ; 
and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful 
under-current of earnestness, which did not fail to 
produce in the listener's mind something like a tem- 
porary faith in what she herself believed so fervently. 
But the streets of London are not favorable to enthu- 
siasms of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to 
flourish anywhere in the English atmosphere; so 
that, long before reaching Paternoster Row, I felt 
that it would be a difficult and doubtful matter to 
advocate the publication of Miss Bacon's book. 
Nevertheless, it did finally get published. 

Months before that happened, however, Miss 
Bacon had taken up her residence at Stratford-on- 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 121 

Avon, drawn thither by the magnetism of those rich 
secrets which she supposed to have been hidden by 
Raleigh, or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shak- 
speare's grave, and protected there by a curse, as 
pirates used to bury their gold in the guardianship 
of a fiend. She took a humble lodging and began 
to haunt the church like a ghost. But she did not 
condescend to any stratagem or underhand attempt 
to violate the grave, which, had she been capable of 
admitting such an idea, might possibly have been 
accomplished by the aid of a resurrection-man. As 
her first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, 
and began to, sound him as to the feasibility of her 
enterprise and his own willingness to engage in it. 
The clerk apparently listened with not unfavorable 
ears ; but, as his situation (which the fees of pilgrims, 
more numerous than at any Catholic shrine, render 
lucrative) would have been forfeited by any malfea- 
sance in office, he stipulated for liberty to consult the 
vicar. Miss Bacon requested to tell her own story to 
the reverend gentleman, and seems to have been 
received by him with the utmost kindness, and even 
to Rave succeeded in making a certain impression on 
his mind as to the desirability of the search. As 
their interview had been under the seal of secrecy, 
he asked permission to consult a friend, who, as Miss 
Bacon either found out or surmised, was a prac- 
titioner of the law. What the legal friend advised 
she did not learn ; but the negotiation continued, and 
certainly was never broken off by an absolute refusal 
on the vicar's part. He, perhaps, was kindly temporiz- 
ing with our poor countrywoman, whom an English- 
man of ordinary mould would have sent to a lunatic 
asylum at once. I cannot help fancying, however, 



122 OUR OLD HOME. 

that her familiarity with the events of Shakspeare's 
life, and of his death and burial, (of which she would 
speak as if she had been present at the edge of the 
grave,) and all the history, literature, and personali- 
ties of the Elizabethan age, together with the pre- 
vailing power of her own belief, and the eloquence 
with which she knew how to enforce it, had really 
gone some little way toward making a convert of the 
good clergyman. If so, I honor him above all the 
hierarchy of England. 

The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However 
erroneously, Miss Bacon had understood from the 
vicar that no obstacles would be interposed to the 
investigation, and that he himself would sanction it 
with his presence. It was to take place after night- 
fall ; and all preliminary arrangements being made, 
the vicar and clerk professed to wait only her word 
in order to set about lifting the awful stone from the 
sepulchre. So, at least, Miss Bacon believed ; and 
as her bewilderment was entirely in her own thoughts, 
and never disturbed her perception or accurate re- 
membrance of external things, I see no reason to 
doubt it, except it be the tinge of absurdity in "the 
fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of 
things, her own convictions began to falter. A doubt 
stole into her mind whether she might not have mis- 
taken the depository and mode of concealment of 
those historic treasures ; and after once admitting the 
doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting 
the stone and finding nothing. She examined the sur- 
face of the gravestone, and endeavored, without stir- 
ring it, to estimate whether it were of such thickness 
as to be capable of containing the archives of the 
Elizabethan club. She went over anew the proofs, 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 123 

the clues, the enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which 
she had discovered in Bacon's letters and elsewhere, 
and now was frightened to perceive that they did not 
point so definitely to Shakspeare's tomb as she had 
heretofore supposed. There was an unmistakably 
distinct reference to a tomb, but it might be Bacon's, 
or Raleigh's, or Spenser's ; and instead of the " Old 
Player," as she profanely called him, it might be either 
of those three illustrious dead, poet, warrior, or states- 
man, whose ashes, in Westminster Abbey, or the 
Tower burial-ground, or wherever they sleep, it was 
her mission to disturb. It is very possible, moreover, 
that her acute mind may always have had a lurking 
and deeply latent distrust of its own fantasies, and that 
this now became strong enough to restrain her from 
a decisive step. 

But she continued to hover around the church, and 
seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the day- 
time, and special license, on one occasion at least, at 
a late hour of the night. She went thither with a 
dark-lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow- 
worm through the volume of obscurity that filled the 
great dusky edifice. Groping her way up the aisle 
and towards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated 
part of the pavement above Shakspeare's grave. If 
the divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and 
cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its dep- 
recatory earnestness would imply, it was time for 
those crumbling relics to bestir themselves under her 
sacrilegious feet. But they were safe. She made no 
attempt to disturb them ; though, I believe, she looked 
narrowly into the crevices between Shakspeare's and 
the two adjacent stones, and in some way satisfied 
herself that her single strength would suffice to lift 



124 0UR 0LD HOME. 

the former, in case of need. She threw the feeble ray 
of her lantern up towards the bust, but could not 
make it visible beneath the darkness of the vaulted 
roof. Had she been subject to superstitious terrors, it 
is impossible to conceive of a situation that could 
better entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakspeare's 
ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have 
shown itself then ; but it is my sincere belief, that, if 
his figure had appeared within the scope of her dark- 
lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his 
eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just 
as we see him in the bust, she would have met him 
fearlessly and controverted his claims to the author- 
ship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught 
herself to contemn " Lord Leicester's groom " (it was 
one of her disdainful epithets for the world's incom- 
parable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disem- 
bodied spirit would hardly have found civil treatment 
at Miss Bacon's hands. 

Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite 
object, continued far into the night. Several times 
she heard a low movement in the aisles : a stealthy, 
dubious foot-fall prowling about in the darkness, now 
here, now there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, 
as if some restless inhabitant of the latter had crept 
forth to peep at the intruder. By-and-by the clerk 
made his appearance, and confessed that he had been 
watching her ever since she entered the church. 

About this time it was that a strange sort of weari- 
ness seems to have fallen upon her : her toil was all 
but done, her great purpose, as she believed, on the 
very point of accomplishment, when she began to re- 
gret that so stupendous a mission had been imposed 
on the fragility of a woman. Her faith in the new 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 1 25 

philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was her 
confidence in her own adequate development of it, now 
about to be given to the world ; yet she wished, or 
fancied so, that it might never have been her duty to 
achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger feebly for- 
ward under her immense burden of responsibility and 
renown. So far as her personal concern in the matter 
went, she would gladly have forfeited the reward of 
her patient study and labor for so many years, her 
exile from her country and estrangement from her 
family and friends, her sacrifice of health and all other 
interests to this one pursuit, if she could only find her- 
self free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten. She 
liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only 
praise that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakspeare, 
the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in 
a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose 
a suitable retirement for a person of shy, but genial 
temperament. And at this point, I cease to possess 
the means of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any 
farther. In consequence of some advice which I 
fancied it my duty to tender, as being the only confi- 
dant whom she now had in the world, I fell under 
Miss Bacon's most severe and passionate displeasure, 
and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It 
was a misfortune to which her friends were always 
particularly liable ; but I think that none of them ever 
loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and 
noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous 
character, the less for it. 

At that time her book was passing through the 
press. Without prejudice to her literary ability, it 
must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to 
prepare her own work for publication, because, among 



126 OUR OLD HOME. 

many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest 
to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was 
sacred, for all had been written under so deep a con- 
viction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect 
of inspiration. A practised book-maker, with entire 
control of her materials, would have shaped out a duo- 
decimo volume full of eloquent and ingenious disser- 
tation, — criticisms which quite take the color and 
pungency out of other people's critical remarks on 
Shakspeare, — philosophic truths which she imagined 
herself to have found at the roots of his conceptions, 
and which certainly come from no inconsiderable 
depth somewhere. There was a great amount of 
rubbish, which any competent editor would have 
shovelled out of the way. But Miss Bacon thrust the 
whole bulk of inspiration and nonsense into the press 
in a lump, and there tumbled out a ponderous octavo 
volume, which fell with a dead thump at the feet of 
the public, and has never been picked up. A few 
persons turned over one or two of the leaves, as it lay 
there, and essayed to kick the volume deeper into the 
mud ; for they were the hack critics of the minor 
periodical press in London, than whom, I suppose, 
though excellent fellows in their way, there are no 
gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in 
a book, or less likely to recognize an author's heart in 
it, or more utterly careless about bruising, if they do 
recognize it. It is their trade. They could not do 
otherwise. I never thought of blaming them. It 
was not for such an Englishman as one of these to 
get beyond the idea that an assault was meditated 
on England's greatest poet. From the scholars and 
critics of her own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might 
have looked for a worthier appreciation, because many 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 127 

of the best of them have higher cultivation, and finer 
and deeper literary sensibilities than all but the very 
profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. But they 
are not a courageous body of men ; they dare not think 
a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest they should 
feel themselves bound to speak it out. If any Ameri- 
can ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon never 
knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once repub- 
lished some of the most brutal vituperations of the 
English press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman 
with stolen mud, without even waiting to know 
whether the ignominy was deserved. And they never 
have known it, to this day, nor ever will. 

The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was 
by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He 
was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and 
professional character, telling me that an American 
lady, who had recently published what the mayor 
called a " Shakspeare book," was afflicted with in- 
sanity. In a lucid interval she had referred to me, as 
a person who had some knowledge of her family and 
affairs. What she may have suffered before her in- 
tellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. 
No author had ever hoped so confidently as she ; none 
ever failed more utterly. A superstitious fancy might 
suggest that the anathema on Shakspeare's tombstone 
had fallen heavily on her head in requital of even the 
unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust be- 
neath, and that the " Old Player " had kept so quietly 
in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he fore- 
saw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But 
if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of 
such things now, he has surely requited the injustice 
that she sought to do him — the high justice that she 



128 OUR OLD HOME. 

really did — by a tenderness of love and pity of which 
only he could be capable. What matters it, though 
she called him by some other name ? He had 
wrought a greater miracle on her than on all the world 
besides. This bewildered enthusiast had recognized 
a depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, 
critics, and learned societies, devoted to the elucida- 
tion of his unrivalled scenes, had never imagined to 
exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that 
all these ages of renown have been able to accumulate 
upon his memory. And when, not many months after 
the outward failure of her lifelong object, she passed 
into the better world, I know not why we should 
hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have 
met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring 
her with friendly and comfortable words, and thank- 
ing her (yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes 
at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for 
having interpreted him to mankind so well. 

I believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable 
book never to have had more than a single reader. I 
myself am acquainted with it only in insulated chapters 
and scattered pages and paragraphs. But, since my 
return to America, a young man of genius and en- 
thusiasm has assured me that he has positively read 
the book from beginning to end, and is completely a 
convert to its doctrines. It belongs to him, therefore, 
and not to me, — whom, in almost the last letter that 
I received from her, she declared unworthy to meddle 
with her work, — it belongs surely to this one individ- 
ual, who has done her so much justice as to know 
what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due posi- 
tion before the public and posterity. 

This has been too sad a story. To lighten the rec- 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 1 29 

ollection of it, I will think of my stroll homeward 
past Charlecote Park, where I beheld the most stately 
elms, singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered all 
about in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion ; so 
that I could not but believe in a lengthened, loitering, 
drowsy enjoyment which these trees must have in 
their existence. Diffused over slow-paced centuries, 
it need not be keen nor bubble into thrills and ecsta- 
sies, like the momentary delights of short-lived human 
beings. They were civilized trees, known to man and 
befriended by him for ages past. There is an inde- 
scribable difference — as I believe I have heretofore 
endeavored to express — between the tamed, but by 
no means effete (on the contrary, the richer and more 
luxuriant) Nature of England, and the rude, shaggy, 
barbarous Nature which offers us its racier companion- 
ship in America. No less a change has been wrought 
among the wildest creatures that inhabit what the 
English call their forests. By-and-by, among those 
refined and venerable trees, I saw a large herd of deer, 
mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque 
groups, while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, 
as if they had been taught to make themselves tribu- 
tary to the scenic effect. Some were running fleetly 
about, vanishing from light into shadow and glancing 
forth again, with here and there a little fawn careering 
at its mother's heels. These deer are almost in the 
same relation to the wild, natural state of their kind 
that the trees of an English park hold to the rugged 
growth of an American forest. They have held a 
certain intercourse with man for immemorial years ; 
and, most probably, the stag that Shakspeare killed 
was one of the progenitors of this very herd, and may 
himself have been a partly civilized and humanized 



130 OUR OLD HOME. 

deer, though in a less degree than these remote pos- 
terity. They are a little wilder than sheep, but they 
do not snuff the air at the approach of human beings, 
nor evince much alarm at their pretty close proximity ; 
although if you continue to advance, they toss their 
heads and take to their heels in a kind of mimic 
terror, or something akin to feminine skittishness, 
with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it were, of 
their having come of a wild stock. They have so long 
been fed and protected by man, that they must have 
lost many of their native instincts, and, I suppose, 
could not live comfortably through even an English 
winter without human help. One is sensible of a 
gentle scorn at them for such dependency, "but feels 
none the less kindly disposed towards the half-do- 
mesticated race ; and it may have been his observa- 
tion of these tamer characteristics in the Charlecote 
herd that suggested to Shakspeare the tender and 
pitiful description of a wounded stag, in " As You 
Like It." 

At a distance of some hundreds of yards from 
Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees be- 
tween it and the roadside, is an old brick archway 
and porter's lodge. In connection with this entrance 
there appears to have been a wall and an ancient moat, 
the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy 
scoop along the base of an embankment of the lawn. 
About fifty yards within the gateway stands the house, 
forming three sides of a square, with three gables in a 
row on the front, and on each of the two wings ; and 
there are several towers and turrets at the angles, to- 
gether with projecting windows, antique balconies, 
and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half-Gothic 
taste in which the edifice was built. Over the gate- 



A GIFTED WOMAN. 131 

way is the Lucy coat-of-arms, emblazoned in its proper 
colors. The mansion dates from the early days of 
Elizabeth, and probably looked very much the same 
as now when Shakspeare was brought before Sir 
Thomas Lucy for outrages among his deer: The im- 
pression is not that of gray antiquity, but of stable 
and time-honored gentility, still as vital as ever. 

It is a most delightful place. All about the house 
and domain there is a perfection of comfort and do- 
mestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could 
have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity 
and labor of many successive generations, intent upon 
adding all possible improvement to the home where 
years gone by and years to come give a sort of per- 
manence to the intangible present. An American is 
sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long 
process can real homes be produced. One man's 
lifetime is not enough for the accomplishment of such 
a work of Art and Nature, almost the greatest merely 
temporary one that is confided to him ; too little, at 
any rate, — yet perhaps too long when he is dis- 
couraged by the idea that he must make his house 
warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race of suc- 
cessors, of whom the one thing certain is, that his 
own grandchildren will not be among them. Such 
repinings as are here suggested, however, come only 
from the fact, that, bred in English habits of thought, 
as most of us are, we have not yet modified our in- 
stincts to the necessities of our new forms of life. A 
lodging in a wigwam or under a tent has really as many 
advantages, when we come to know them, as a home 
beneath the roof-tree of Charlecote Hall But, alas ! 
our philosophers have not yet taught us what is best, 
nor have our poets sung us what is beautifullest, in the 



132 OUR OLD HOME. 

kind of life that we must lead ; and therefore we still 
read the old English wisdom, and harp upon the 
ancient strings. And thence it happens, that, when 
we look at a time-honored hall, it seems more possible 
for men who inherit such a home, than for ourselves, 
to lead noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good 
and lovely things as their daily work, and achieving 
deeds of simple greatness when circumstances require 
them. I sometimes apprehend that our institutions 
may perish before we shall have discovered the most 
precious of the possibilities which they involve. 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1 33 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

After my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went by 
an indirect route to Lichfield, and put up at the Black 
Swan. Had I known where to find it, I would much 
rather have established myself at the inn formerly kept 
by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his ale in 
Farquhar\s time. The Black Swan is an old-fashioned 
hotel, its street-front being penetrated by an arched 
passage, in either side of which is an entrance-door to 
the different parts of the house, and through which, 
and over the large stones of its pavement, all vehicles 
and horsemen rumble and clatter into an enclosed 
court-yard, with a thunderous uproar among the con- 
tiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be the 
only guest of the spacious establishment, but may have 
had a few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate par- 
lors, and utterly eschewing that community of interests 
which is the characteristic feature of life in an Ameri- 
can hotel. At any rate, I had the great, dull, dingy, 
and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old mahogany 
chairs and tables, all to myself, and not a soul to ex- 
change a word with, except the waiter, who, like most 
of his class in England, had evidently left his conver- 
sational abilities uncultivated. No former practice of 
solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor well-tested 
self-dependence for occupation of mind and amuse- 
ment, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissipate the 
ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room under 



134 OUR OLD HOME. 

such circumstances as these, with no book at hand 
save the county-directory, nor any newspaper but a 
torn local journal of five days ago. So I buried my- 
self, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient feathers, (there 
is no other kind of bed in these old inns,) let my head 
sink into an unsubstantial pillow, and slept a stifled 
sleep, infested with such a fragmentary confusion of 
dreams that I took them to be a medley, compounded 
of the night-troubles of all my predecessors in that 
same unrestful couch. And when I awoke, the musty 
odor of a bygone century was in my nostrils — a faint, 
elusive smell, of which I never had any conception 
before crossing the Atlantic. 

In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of 
chiccory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and 
bewildered myself a little while among the crooked 
streets, in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly 
attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient 
date, and its name in the old Saxon tongue, has a 
dismal import that would apply well, in these days 
and forever henceforward, to many an unhappy locality 
in our native land. Lichfield signifies " The Field of 
the Dead Bodies " — an epithet, however, which the 
town did not assume in remembrance of a battle, but 
which probably sprung up by a natural process, like 
a sprig of rue or other funereal weed, out of the graves 
of two princely brothers, sons of a pagan king of 
Mercia, who were converted by Saint Chad, and after- 
wards martyred for their Christian faith. Neverthe- 
less, I was but little interested in the legends of the 
remote antiquity of Lichfield, being drawn thither 
partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I 
believe, because it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson, 
with whose sturdy English character I became ac- 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1 35 

quainted, at a very early period of my life, through the 
good offices of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as 
familiar to my recollection, and almost as vivid in his 
personal aspect to my mind's eye, as the kindly figure 
of my own grandfather. It is only a solitary child — 
left much to such wild modes of culture as he chooses 
for himself while yet ignorant what culture means, 
standing on tiptoe to pull down books from no very 
lofty shelf, and then shutting himself up, as it were, 
between the leaves, going astray through the volume 
at his own pleasure, and comprehending it rather by 
his sensibilities and affections than his intellect — that 
child is the only student that ever gets the sort of inti- 
macy which I am now thinking of, with a literary per- 
sonage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much 
about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent pro- 
ductions, except his two stern and masculine poems, 
" London, 11 and " The Vanity of Human Wishes " ; 
it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew 
and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities per- 
haps more thoroughly than I do now, though never 
seeking to put my instinctive perception of his char- 
acter into language. 

Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser 
friend than he. The atmosphere in which alone he 
breathed was dense ; his awful dread of death showed 
how much muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out 
of him, before he could be capable of spiritual exist- 
ence ; he meddled only with the surface of life, and 
never cared to penetrate farther than to ploughshare 
depth ; his very sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed 
clear-sightedness. I laughed at him, sometimes, 
standing beside his knee. And yet, considering that 
my native propensities were towards Fairy Land, and 



136' OUR OLD HOME. 

also how much yeast is generally mixed up with the 
mental sustenance of a New Englander, it may not 
have been altogether amiss, in those childish and boy- 
ish days, to keep pace with this heavy-footed traveller 
and feed on the gross diet that he carried in his knap- 
sack. It is wholesome food even now. And, then, 
how English ! Many of the latent sympathies that 
enabled me to enjoy the Old Country so well, and that 
so readily amalgamated themselves with the American 
ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may have 
been derived from, or fostered and kept alive by, the 
great English moralist. Never was a descriptive 
epithet more nicely appropriate than that! Dr. John- 
son's morality was as English an article as a beef- 
steak. 

'The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are 
called cities, in England) stands on an ascending site. 
It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, 
for example, but still enough to gratify an American 
appetite for the antiquities of domestic architecture. 
The people, too, have an old-fashioned way with them, 
and stare at the passing visitor, as if the railway had 
not yet quite accustomed them to the novelty of 
strange faces moving along their ancient sidewalks. 
The old women whom I met, in several instances, 
dropt me a courtesy ; and as they were of decent and 
comfortable exterior, and kept quietly on their way 
without pause or further greeting, it certainly was not 
allowable to interpret their little act of respect as a 
modest method of asking for sixpence ; so that I had 
the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the reveren- 
tial and hospitable manners of elder times, when the 
rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth 
a general acknowledgment. Positively, coming from 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 137 

such humble sources, I took it all the more as a wel- 
come on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have 
exchanged it for an invitation from the mayor and 
magistrates to a public dinner. Yet I wish, merely for 
the experiment's sake, that I could have emboldened 
myself to hold out the aforesaid sixpence to at least 
one of the old ladies. 

In my wanderings about town, I came to an artifi- 
cial piece of water, called the Minster Pool. It fills 
the immense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the 
building materials of the cathedral were quarried out a 
great many centuries ago. I should never have guessed 
the little lake to be of man's creation, so very pretty 
and quietly picturesque an object has it grown to be, 
with its green banks, and the old trees hanging over its 
glassy surface, in which you may see reflected some of 
the battlements of the majestic structure that once lay 
here in unshaped stone. Some little children stood 
on the edge of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks ; and 
the scene reminded me (though really to be quite fair 
with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now 
escaped me,) of that mysterious lake in the Arabian 
Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and 
where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabit- 
ants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no 
need of fanciful associations to make the spot interest- 
ing. It was in the porch of one of the houses, in the 
street that runs beside the Minster Pool, that Lord 
Brooke was slain, in the time of the Parliamentary 
war, by a shot from the battlements of the cathedral, 
which was then held by the Royalists as a fortress. 
The incident is commemorated by an inscription on a 
stone, inlaid into the wall of the house. 

I know not what rank the Cathedral of Lichfield 



138 OUR OLD HOME. 

holds among its sister edifices in England, as a piece 
of magnificent architecture. Except that of Chester, 
(the grim and simple nave of which stands yet un- 
rivalled in my memory,) and one or two small ones in 
North Wales, hardly worthy of the name of cathedrals, 
it was the first that I had seen. To my uninstructed 
vision, it seemed the object best worth gazing at in 
the whole world ; and now, after beholding a great 
many more, I remember it with less prodigal admira- 
tion only because others are as magnificent as itself. 
The traces remaining in my memory represent it as airy 
rather than massive. A multitude of beautiful shapes 
appeared to be comprehended within its single out- 
line ; it was a kind of kaleidoscopic mystery, so rich a 
variety of aspects did it assume from each altered point 
of view, through the presentation of a different face, 
and the rearrangement of its peaks and pinnacles 
and the three battlemented towers, with the spires 
that shot heavenward from all three, but one loftier 
than its fellows. Thus it impressed you, at every 
change, as a newly created structure of the passing 
moment, in which yet you lovingly recognized the half- 
vanished structure of the instant before, and felt, 
moreover, a joyful faith in the indestructible existence 
of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A Gothic cathedral 
is surely the most wonderful work which mortal man 
has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so pro- 
foundly simple, with such strange, delightful recesses 
in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend within 
one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ultimately 
draws the beholder and his universe into its harmony. 
It is the only thing in the world that is vast enough 
and rich enough. 

Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1 39 

enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not 
elevate myself to its spiritual height, any more than I 
could have climbed from the ground to the summit of 
one of its pinnacles. Ascending but a little way, I 
continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair, con- 
scious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty was 
pouring down upon me, of which I could appropriate 
only the minutest portion. After a hundred years, 
incalculably as my higher sympathies might be invig- 
orated by so divine an employment, I should still be 
a gazer from below and at an awful distance, as yet 
remotely excluded from the interior mystery. But it 
was something gained, even to have that painful sense 
of my own limitations, and that half-smothered yearn- 
ing to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed me 
how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of 
immortality. After all, this was probably the best 
lesson that it could bestow, and, taking it as thoroughly 
as possible home to my heart, I was fain to be content. 
If the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthusiasm 
soon flagged, and I began to lose the vision of a 
spiritual or ideal edifice behind the time-worn and 
weather-stained front of the actual structure. When- 
ever that is the case, it is most reverential to look 
another way ; but the mood disposes one to minute 
investigation, and I took advantage of it to examine 
the intricate and multitudinous adornment that was 
lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. 
Everywhere, there were empty niches where statues 
had been thrown down, and here and there a statue 
still lingered in its niche ; and over the chief entrance, 
and extending across the whole breadth of the build- 
ing, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, 
and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being much 



140 OUR OLD HOME. 

corroded by the moist English atmosphere, during 
four or five hundred winters that they had stood there, 
these benign and majestic figures perversely put me in 
mind of the appearance of a sugar image, after a child 
has been holding it in his mouth. The venerable in- 
fant Time has evidently found them sweet morsels. 

Inside of the minster there is a long and lofty 
nave, transepts of the same height, and side-aisles 
and chapels, dim nooks of holiness, where in catholic 
times the lamps were continually burning before the 
richly decorated shrines of saints. In the audacity of 
my ignorance, as I humbly acknowledge it to have 
been, I criticised this great interior as too much 
broken into compartments, and shorn of half its 
rightful impressiveness by the interposition of a screen 
betwixt the nave and chancel. It did not spread 
itself in breadth but ascended to the roof in lofty 
narrowness. One large body of worshippers might 
have knelt down in the nave, others in each of the 
transepts, and smaller ones in the side-aisles, besides 
an indefinite number of esoteric enthusiasts in the 
mysterious sanctities beyond the screen. Thus it 
seemed to typify the exclusiveness of sects rather 
than the world-wide hospitality of genuine religion. 
I had imagined a cathedral with a scope more vast. 
These Gothic aisles, with their groined arches over- 
head, supported by clustered pillars in long vistas up 
and down, were venerable and magnificent, but 
included too much of the twilight of that monkish 
gloom out of which they grew. It is no matter 
whether I ever came to a more satisfactory apprecia- 
tion of this kind of architecture ; the only value of 
my strictures being to show the folly of looking 
at noble objects in the wrong mood, and the 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 141 

absurdity of a new visitant pretending to hold any 
opinion whatever on such subjects, instead of sur- 
rendering himself to the old builder's influence with 
childlike simplicity. 

A great deal of white marble decorates the old 
stone work of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, 
sarcophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are 
commemorative of people locally distinguished, espe- 
cially the deans and canons of the cathedral, with 
their relatives and families ; and I found but two 
monuments of personages whom I had ever heard 
of, — one being Gilbert Walmesley, and the other 
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, a literary acquaintance 
of my boyhood. It was really pleasant to meet her 
there ; for after a friend has lain in the grave far 
into the second century, she would be unreasonable 
to require any melancholy emotions in a chance inter- 
view at her tombstone. It adds a rich charm to 
sacred edifices, this time-honored custom of burial in 
churches, after a few years, at least, when the mortal 
remains have turned to dust beneath the pavement, 
and the quaint devices and inscriptions still speak to 
you above. The statues, that stood or reclined in 
several recesses of the Cathedral, had a kind of life, 
and I regarded them with an odd sort of deference, as 
if they were privileged denizens of the precinct. It 
was singular, too, how the memorial of the latest 
buried person, the man whose features were familiar in 
the streets of Lichfield only yesterday, seemed pre- 
cisely as much at home here as his mediaeval prede- 
cessors. Henceforward ne belonged to the cathedral 
like one of its original pillars. Methought this im- 
pression in my fancy might be the shadow of a spiritual 
fact. The dying melt into the great multitude of the 



142 OUR OLD HOME. 

Departed as quietly as a drop of water into the ocean, 
and, it may be, are conscious of no unfamiliarity with 
their new circumstances, but immediately become 
aware of an insufferable strangeness in the world 
which they have quitted. Death has not taken them 
away, but brought them home. 

The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary 
affairs, however, have not ceased to attend upon these 
marble inhabitants ; for I saw the upper fragment of 
a sculptured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the 
lower half of whom had doubtless been demolished by 
Cromwell's soldiers when they took the Minster by 
storm. And there lies the remnant of this devout 
lady on her slab, ever since the outrage, as for cen- 
turies before, with a countenance of divine serenity 
and her hands clasped in prayer, symbolizing a 
depth of religious faith which no earthly turmoil or 
calamity could disturb. Another piece of sculpture 
(apparently a favorite subject in the middle ages, for 
I have seen several like it in other Cathedrals), was a 
reclining skeleton, as faithfully representing an open- 
work of bones as could well be expected in a solid 
block of marble, and at a period, moreover, when the 
mysteries of the human frame were rather to be 
guessed at than revealed. Whatever the anatomical 
defects of his production, the old sculptor had suc- 
ceeded in making it ghastly beyond measure. How 
much mischief has been wrought upon us by this in- 
variable gloom of the Gothic imagination; flinging 
itself like a death-scented pall over our conceptions 
of the future state, smothering our hopes, hiding our 
sky, and inducing dismal efforts to raise the harvest 
of immortality out of what is most opposite to it, — 
the grave ! 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1 43 

The Cathedral service is performed twice every day ; 
at ten o'clock and at four. When I first entered, the 
choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys, 
with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as 
fresh as bird-notes) were just winding up their har- 
monious labors, and soon came thronging through a 
side-door from the chancel into the nave. They were 
all dressed in long, white robes, and looked like a 
peculiar order of beings, created on purpose to hover 
between the roof and pavement of that dim, conse- 
crated edifice, and illuminate it with divine melodies, 
reposing themselves, meanwhile, on the heavy gran- 
deur of the organ-tones like cherubs on a golden 
cloud. All at once, however, one of the cherubic 
multitude pulled off his white gown, thus transform- 
ing himself before my very eyes into a commonplace 
youth of the day, in modern frock-coat and trousers 
of a decidedly provincial cut. This absurd little in- 
cident, I verily believe, had a sinister effect in putting 
meat odds with the proper influences of the Cathedral, 
nor could I quite recover a suitable frame of mind 
during my stay there. But, emerging into the open 
air, I began to be sensible that I had left a magnificent 
interior behind me, and I have never quite lost the 
perception and enjoyment of it in these intervening 
years. 

A large space in the immediate neighborhood of 
the Cathedral is called the Close, and comprises beau- 
tifully kept lawns and a shadowy walk, bordered by 
the dwellings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the 
diocese. All this row of episcopal, canonical, and 
clerical residences, has an air of the deepest quiet, 
repose, and well-protected, though not inaccessible 
seclusion. They seemed capable of including every- 



144 0UR 0LD home. 

thing that a saint could desire, and a great many more 
things than most of us sinners generally succeed in 
acquiring. Their most marked feature is a dignified 
comfort, looking as if no disturbance or vulgar intru- 
siveness could ever cross their thresholds, encroach 
upon their ornamented lawns, or straggle into the 
beautiful gardens that surround them with flower-beds 
and rich clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal palace 
is a stately mansion of stone, built somewhat in the 
Italian style, and bearing on its front the figures 1687, 
as the date of its erection. A large edifice of brick, 
which, if I remember, stood next to the palace, I took 
to be the residence of the second dignitary of the 
Cathedral ; and, in that case, it must have been the 
youthful home of Addison, whose father was Dean of 
Lichfield. I tried to fancy his figure on the delight- 
ful walk that extends in front of those priestly abodes, 
from which and the interior lawns it is separated by 
an openwork iron fence, lined with rich old shrubbery, 
and overarched by a minster-aisle of venerable trees. 
This path is haunted by the shades of famous person- 
ages who have formerly trodden it. Johnson must 
have been familiar with it, both as a boy, and in his 
subsequent visits to Lichfield, an illustrious old man. 
Miss Seward, connected with so many literary remi- 
niscences, lived in one of the adjacent houses. Tradi- 
tion says that it was a favorite spot of Major Andre, 
who used to pace to and fro under these trees, waiting, 
perhaps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of Honoria 
Sneyd, before he crossed the ocean to encounter his 
dismal doom from an American court-martial. David 
Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the path in his 
boyish days, and, if he was an early student of the 
drama, must often have thought of those two airy 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1 45 

characters of the " Beaux' Stratagem," Archer and 
Aimwell, who, on this very ground, after attending 
service at the Cathedral, contrive to make acquaintance 
with the ladies of the comedy. These creatures of 
mere fiction have as positive a substance now as the 
sturdy old figure of Johnson himself. They live, 
while realities have died. The shadowy walk still 
glistens with their gold-embroidered memories. 

Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found it in St. 
Mary's Square, which is not so much a square as the 
mere widening of a street. The house is tall and 
thin, of three stories, with a square front and a roof 
rising steep and high. On a side-view, the building 
looks as if it had been cut in two in the midst, there 
being no slope of the roof on that side. A ladder 
slanted against the wall, and a painter was giving a 
livelier hue to the plaster. In a corner-room of the 
basement, where old Michael Johnson may be sup- 
posed to have sold books, is now what we should call 
a dry-goods store, or, according to the English phrase, 
a mercer's and haberdasher's shop. The house has a 
private entrance on a cross-street, the door being ac- 
cessible by several much worn stone-steps, which are 
bordered by an iron balustrade. I set my foot on the 
steps and laid my hand on the balustrade, where 
Johnson's hand and foot must many a time have been, 
and ascending to the door, I knocked once, and again, 
and again, and got no admittance. Going round to 
the shop-entrance, I tried to open it, but found it as 
fast bolted as the gate of Paradise. It is mortifying 
to be so balked in one's little enthusiasms ; but look- 
ing round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of, 
I was a good deal consoled by the sight of Dr. John- 
son himself, who happened, just at that moment, to be 



I46 OUR OLD HOME. 

sitting at his ease nearly in the middle of St. Mary's 
Square, with his face turned towards his father's 
house. 

Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the 
doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together with 
the ponderous melancholy that had so long weighed 
him down, — the intelligent reader will at once com- 
prehend that he was marble in his substance, and 
seated in a marble chair, on an elevated stone-pedestal. 
In short, it was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and 
placed here in 1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, the 
reverend chancellor of the Diocese. 

The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much 
more so than the mountainous doctor himself) and 
looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten 
or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity 
of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
portrait of Johnson, but calmer and sweeter in expres- 
sion. Several big books are piled up beneath his 
chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in 
his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his 
learned abstraction, owl-like, yet benevolent at heart. 
The statue is immensely massive, a vast ponderosity 
of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully 
humanized, but rather resembling a great stone- 
boulder than a man. You must look with the eyes 
of faith and sympathy, or possibly, you might lose the 
human being altogether, and find only a big stone 
within your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three 
bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented as 
hardly more than a baby, bestriding an old man 1 ? 
shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head which he 
embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly 
to the high-church eloquence of Dr. Sacheverell. In 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 147 

the second tablet, he is seen riding to school on the 
shoulders of two of his comrades, while another boy 
supports him in the rear. 

The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a great 
deal of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is 
probably the more alive, because I have always been 
profoundly impressed by the incident here commemo- 
rated, and long ago tried to tell it for the behoof of 
childish readers. It shows Johnson in the market- 
place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for an act of dis- 
obedience to his father, committed fifty years before. 
He stands bare-headed, a venerable figure, and a 
countenance extremely sad and woe-begone, with the 
wind and rain driving hard against him, and thus 
helping to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his 
inward state. Some market-people and children gaze 
awe-stricken into his face, and an aged man and 
woman, with clasped and uplifted hands, seem to be 
praying for him. These latter personages (whose 
introduction by the artist is none the less effective, 
because, in queer proximity, there are some com- 
modities of market-day in the shape of living ducks 
and dead poultry,) I interpreted to represent the 
spirits of Johnson's father and mother, lending what 
aid they could to lighten his half-century's burden of 
remorse. 

I had never heard of the above-described piece of 
sculpture before ; it appears to have no reputation as 
a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves 
any. For me, however, it did as much as sculpture 
could, under the circumstances, even if the artist of 
the Libyan Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my in- 
terest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly 
by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty 



148 OUR OLD HOME. 

and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the pen- 
ance. So, the next day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, 
on one of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that 
I ever undertook, to see the very spot where Johnson 
had stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its 
name is pronounced Yute-oxeter) as being about nine 
miles off from Lichfield, but the county-map would 
indicate a greater distance ; and by rail, passing from 
one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles. 
I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson 
sending his literary merchandise by carrier's wagon, 
journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on market-day morn- 
ing, selling books through the busy hours, and return- 
ing to Lichfield at night. This could not possibly 
have been the case. 

Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects 
that I saw, with a green field or two between them 
and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, 
rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. 
A very short walk takes you from the station up into 
the town. It had been my previous impression that 
the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately round 
about the church ; and, if I remember the narrative 
aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes 
his father's book-stall as standing in the market- 
place, close beside the sacred edifice. It is impossible 
for me to say what changes may have occurred in the 
topography of the town, during almost a century and 
a half since Michael Johnson retired from business, 
and ninety years, at least, since his son's penance 
was performed. But the church has now merely a 
street of ordinary width passing around it, while the 
market-place, though near at hand, neither forms a 
part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 149 

and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and 
surge against the churchyard and the old gray tower. 
Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a per- 
son from the centre of the market-place to the church- 
door ; and Michael Johnson might very conveniently 
have located his stall and laid out his literary ware in 
the corner at the tower's base ; better there, indeed, 
than in the busy centre of an agricultural market. But 
the picturesque arrangement and full impressiveness 
of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not 
have done his penance in a corner, ever so little re- 
tired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the crowd 
— the midmost man of the market-place — a central 
image of Memory and Remorse, contrasting with and 
overpowering the petty materialism around him. , He 
himself, having the force to throw vitality and truth 
into what persons differently constituted might reckon 
a mere external ceremony, and an absurd one, could 
not have failed to see this necessity. I am resolved, 
therefore, that the true site of Dr. Johnson's penance 
was in the middle of the market-place. 

That important portion of the town is a rather 
spacious and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded 
by houses and shops, some of them old, with red-tiled 
roofs, others wearing a pretence of newness, but prob- 
ably as old in their inner substance as the rest. The 
people of Uttoxeter seemed very idle in the warm 
summer-day, and were scattered in little groups along 
the side-walks, leisurely chatting with one another, 
and often turning about to take a deliberate stare at 
my humble self; insomuch that I felt as if my genuine 
sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many 
reflections about him, must have imbued me with 
some of his own singularity of mien. If their great- 



150 OUR OLD HOME. 

grandfathers were such redoubtable starers in the 
Doctor's day, his penance was no light one. This 
curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors to the little 
town, except for market purposes, and I question if 
Uttoxeter ever saw an American before. The only 
other thing that greatly impressed me was the abun- 
dance of public-houses, one at every step or two : Red 
Lions, White Harts, Bulls 1 Heads, Mitres, Cross Keys, 
and I know not what besides. These are probably 
for the accommodation of the farmers and peasantry 
of the neighborhood on market-day, and content 
themselves with a very meagre business on other days 
of the week. At any rate, I was the only guest in 
Uttoxeter at the period of my visit, and had but an 
infinitesimal portion of patronage to distribute among 
such a multitude of inns. The reader, however, will 
possibly be scandalized to learn what was the first, 
and, indeed, the only important affair that I attended 
to, after coming so far to indulge a solemn and high 
emotion, and standing now on the very spot where my 
pious errand should have been consummated. I 
stepped into one of the rustic hostelries and got my 
dinner, — bacon and greens, some mutton-chops, 
iuicier and more delectable than all America could 
serve up at the President's table, and a gooseberry 
pudding : a sufficient meal for six yeomen, and good 
enough for a prince, besides a pitcher of foaming ale. 
the whole at the pitiful small charge of eighteenpence! 
Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody 
had a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. 
And as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my 
dinner, — it was the wisest thing I had done that day. 
A sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed 
into these attempts to realize the things which he has 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 151 

dreamed about, and which, when they cease to be 
purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the truest of 
their truth, the loftiest and profoundest part of their 
power over his sympathies. Facts, as we really find 
them, whatever poetry they may involve, are covered 
with a stony excrescence of prose, resembling the 
crust on a beautiful sea-shell, and they never show 
':heir most delicate and divinest colors until we shall 
have dissolved away their grosser actualities by steep- 
ing them long in a powerful menstruum of thought. 
And seeking to actualize them again, we do but renew 
die crust. If this were otherwise — if the moral sub- 
limity of a great fact depended in any degree on its 
garb of external circumstances, things which change 
and decay — it could not itself be immortal and 
ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time and a little 
neighborhood would be spiritually nourished by its 
grandeur and beauty. 

Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled 
with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old 
quaffer of that excellent liquor stir up his cup with a 
sprig of some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile 
I found myself still haunted by a desire to get a 
definite result out of my visit to Uttoxeter. The 
hospitable inn was called the Nag's Head, and stand- 
ing beside the market-place, was as likely as any 
other to have entertained old Michael Johnson in the 
days when he used to come hither to sell books. He, 
perhaps, had dined on bacon and greens, and drunk 
his ale, and smoked his pipe, in the very room where 
I now sat, which was a low, ancient room, certainly 
much older than Queen Anne's time, with a red-brick 
floor, and a white-washed ceiling, traversed by bare, 
rough beams, the whole in the rudest fashion, but 



152 OUR OLD HOME. 

extremely neat. Neither did it lack ornament, the 
walls being hung with colored engravings of prize 
oxen and other pretty prints, and the mantel-piece 
adorned with earthenware figures of shepherdesses in 
the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael Johnson's 
eyes might have rested on that self-same earthen 
image, to examine which more closely I had just 
crossed the brick pavement of the room. And, sitting 
down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced through 
the open window into the sunny market-place, and 
wished that I could honestly fix on one spot* rather 
than another, as likely to have been the holy site 
where Johnson stood to do his penance. 

How strange and stupid it is that tradition should 
not have marked and kept in mind the very place ! 
How shameful (nothing less than that) that there 
should be no local memorial of this incident, as beau- 
tiful and touching a passage as can be cited out of any 
human life ! No inscription of it, almost as sacred 
as a verse of Scripture, on the wall of the church! 
No statue of the venerable and illustrious penitent in 
the market-place to throw a wholesome awe over its 
earthliness, its frauds and petty wrongs of which the 
benumbed fingers of conscience can make no record, 
its selfish competition of each man with his brother or 
his neighbor, its traffic of soul-substance for a little 
worldly gain ! Such a statue, if the piety of the 
people did not raise it, might almost have been ex- 
pected to grow up out of the pavement of its own 
accord on the spot that had been watered by the rain 
that dripped from Johnson's garments, mingled with 
his remorseful tears. 

Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that 
there were individuals in the town who could have 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1 53 

shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson 
performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that 
sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have in- 
duced certain local discussions as to the expediency 
of erecting a memorial. With all deference to my 
polite informant, I surmise that there is a mistake, 
and decline, without further and precise evidence, 
giving credit to either of the above statements. The 
inhabitants know nothing, as a matter of general 
interest, about the penance, and care nothing for the 
scene of it. If the clergyman of the parish, for ex- 
ample, had ever heard of it, would he not have used 
the theme, time and again, wherewith to work ten- 
derly and profoundly on the souls committed to his 
charge ? If parents were familiar with it, would they 
not teach it to their young ones at the fireside, both 
to insure reverence to their own gray hairs, and to 
protect the children from such unavailing regrets as 
Johnson bore upon his heart for fifty years ? If the 
site were ascertained, would not the pavement there- 
abouts be worn with reverential footsteps ? Would 
not every town-born child be able to direct the pil- 
grim thither ? While waiting at the station, before 
my departure, I asked a boy who stood near me, — 
an intelligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or thirteen 
years old, whom I should take to be a clergyman's 
son, — I asked him if he had ever heard the story of 
Dr. Johnson, how he stood an hour doing penance 
near that church, the spire of which rose before us. 
The boy stared and answered, — 

« No ! " 

" Were you born in Uttoxeter ? " 

"Yes." 

I inquired if no circumstance such as I had men- 



154 OUR OLD HOME. 

tioned was known or talked about among the inhabit- 
ants. 

"No," said the boy ; " not that I ever heard of." . 

Just think of the absurd little town, knowing 
nothing of the only memorable incident which ever 
happened within its boundaries since the old Britons 
built it, this sad and lovely story, which consecrates 
the spot (for I found it holy to my contemplation, 
again, as soon as it lay behind me) in the heart of a 
stranger from three thousand miles over the sea ! It 
but confirms what I have been saying, that sublime 
and beautiful facts are best understood when ethereal- 
ized by distance. 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON, 155 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

We set out at a little past eleven, and made our 
first stage to Manchester. We were by this time 
sufficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a Jpright 
and sunny one ; although the May sunshine was 
mingled with water, as it were, and distempered with 
a very bitter east wind. 

Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except 
its hilly portions,) and I have never passed through 
it without wishing myself anywhere but in that parti- 
cular spot where I then happened to be. A few 
places along our route were historically interesting ; 
as, for example, Bolton, which was the scene of many 
remarkable events in the Parliamentary War, and in 
the market-square of which one of the Earls of Derby 
was beheaded. We saw, along the wayside, the 
never-failing green fields, hedges, and other monoto- 
nous features of an ordinary English landscape. There 
were little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with 
their tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, 
their ugliness of brick-work, and their heaps of ref- 
use matter from the furnace, which seems to be the 
only kind of stuff which Nature cannot take back to 
herself and resolve into the elements, when man has 
thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and effete 
mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of iron- 
mongering towns, and, even after a considerable an- 
tiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass. 



156 OUR OLD HOME. 

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef- 
field and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather 
better than that through which we had hitherto passed, 
though still by no means very striking ; for (except 
in the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or 
Derbyshire) English scenery is not particularly well 
worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. 
It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt ; and 
the rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by 
human art, are perhaps as attractive to an American 
eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, 
however, between Manchester and Sheffield was not 
through a rich tract of country, but along a valley 
walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a 
rampart, and across black moorlands with here and 
there a plantation of trees. Sometimes there were 
long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and desolate, 
conveying the very impression which the reader gets 
from many passages of Miss Bronte's novels, and still 
more from those of her two sisters. Old stone or 
brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an old church- 
tower, were visible : but these are almost too com- 
mon objects to be noticed in an English landscape. 

On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the 
country is seen quite amiss, because it was never in- 
tended to be looked at from any point of view in that 
straight line ; so that it is like looking at the wrong 
side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and 
footpaths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and 
adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the 
physiognomy of the country ; and, furthermore, every 
object within view of them had some subtile reference 
to their curves and undulations : but the line of a 
railway is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 157 

things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause 
what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing 
within the scope of a railway traveller's eye ; and if 
there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a 
flying shot at the picturesque. 

At one of the stations (it was near a village of 
ancient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide 
Yorkshire moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who 
seemed to have just alighted from the train. She 
caught my attention by a singular movement of the 
head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at 
regular intervals, as if she were making a stern and 
solemn protest against some action that developed 
itself before her eyes, and were foreboding terrible 
disaster, if it should be persisted in. Of course, it 
was nothing more than a paralytic or nervous affec- 
tion ; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in 
some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime 
ago in this old gentlewoman's presence, either against 
herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her 
features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, 
was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep 
them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to 
paralytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexor- 
able character of the motion — her look of force and 
self-control, which had the appearance of rendering 
it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful — have stamped 
this poor lady's face and gesture into my memory ; so 
that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will re- 
produce herself in a dismal romance. 

The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the 
tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield 
station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous 
town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of 



158 OUR OLD HOME. 

its own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely 
vague and misty, — or, rather, smoky: for Sheffield 
seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or 
Birmingham, — smokier than all England besides, un- 
less Newcastle be the exception. It might have been 
Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor ; 
and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel 
three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth 
and depth of a mountainous hill. 

After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, 
gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw 
what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of 
Sherwood Forest, — not consisting, however, of thou- 
sand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but 
of young and thriving plantations, which will require 
a century or two of slow English growth to give them 
much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property 
lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was 
hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. 
Farther onward the country grew quite level around 
us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincoln- 
shire ; and shortly after six o 'clock we caught the 
first glimpse of the Cathedral towers, though they 
loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived 
idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edi- 
fice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it to 
be larger than our receptivity could take in. 

At the railway-station we found no cab, (it being 
an unknown vehicle in Lincoln,) but only an omnibus 
belonging to the Saracen's Head, which the driver 
recommended as the best hotel in the city, and took 
us thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and 
looked comfortable enough ; though, like the hotels 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 59 

of most old English towns, it had a musty fragrance 
of antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened 
London church where the broad-aisle is paved with 
tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, 
the entrance into its interior court-yard being through 
an arch, in the side of which is the door of the hotel. 
There are long corridors, an intricate arrangement of 
passages, and an up-and-down meandering of stair- 
cases, amid which it would be no marvel to encounter 
some forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred 
years ago, and was still seeking for his bedroom while 
the rest of his generation were in their graves. There 
is no exaggerating the confusion of mind that seizes 
upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a 
great old-fashioned English inn. 

This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, 
and within a very short distance of one of the ancient 
city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with 
a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side ; the 
whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy struc- 
ture, through the dark vista of which you look into 
the Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains 
many antique peculiarities ; though, unquestionably, 
English domestic architecture has lost its most im- 
pressive features, in the course of the last century. In 
this respect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln : 
Chester, for instance, and Shrewsbury, — which last 
is unusually rich in those quaint and stately edifices 
where the gentry of the shire used to make their win- 
ter-abodes, in a provincial metropolis. Almost every- 
where, nowadays, there is a monotony of modern brick 
or stuccoed fronts, hiding houses that are older than 
ever, but obliterating the picturesque antiquity of the 
street. 



l60 OUR OLD HOME. 

Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still broad 
daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay 
a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathedrali 
Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close 
by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper 
and narrower as we advanced, till at last it got to be 
the steepest street I ever climbed, — so steep that any 
carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much 
faster than it could possibly be drawn up. Being 
almost the only hill in Lincolnshire, the inhabitants 
seem disposed to make the most of it. The houses 
on each side had no very remarkable aspect, except 
one with a stone portal and carved ornaments, which 
is now a dwelling-place for poverty-stricken people, 
but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days 
of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architec- 
ture dates back. This is called the Jewess's House, 
having been inhabited by a woman of that faith who 
was hanged six hundred years ago. 

And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer- 
tainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to 
be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost 
angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesi- 
astical duty to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, 
and was probably performed as such, and groaned 
over accordingly, in monkish times. Formerly, on the 
day of his installation, the Bishop used to ascend the 
hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invig- 
orated by looking upward to the grandeur that was to 
console him for the humility of his approach. We, 
likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the 
Cathedral towers, and, finally, attaining an open square 
on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the 
left hand, and another to the right. The latter had 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. l6l 

apparently been a part of the exterior defences of the 
Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified. 
The west front rose behind. We passed through one 
of the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found our- 
selves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, 
where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, look- 
ing down on the ancient structures that surround it, 
all of which, in former days, were the habitations of its 
dignitaries and officers. Some of them are still oc- 
cupied as such, though others are in too neglected and 
dilapidated a state to seem worthy of so splendid an 
establishment. Unless it be Salisbury Close, how- 
ever, (which is incomparably rich as regards the old 
residences that belong to it,) I remember no more 
comfortably picturesque precincts round any other 
cathedral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral close, 
in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, coziest, saf- 
est, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most en- 
joyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of 
mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, 
to combine all this with the service of the temple ! 

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown- 
stone, which appears either to have been largely re- 
stored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly 
surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of 
the ancient churches and castles in England. In many 
parts, the recent restorations are quite evident ; but 
other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have 
been touched for centuries : for there are still the gar- 
goyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may 
be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque 
extravagance which no modern imitation can effect. 
There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height 
of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all 



1 62 OUR OLD HOME. 

over the walls : most of them empty, but a few con- 
taining the lamentable remnants of headless saints 
and angels. It is singular what a native animosity 
lives in the human heart against carved images, inso- 
much that, whether they represent Christian saint or 
Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first 
safe opportunity to knock off their heads ! In spite of 
all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front 
of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered 
from massive base to airy summit with the minutest 
details of sculpture and carving : at least, it was so 
once ; and even now the spiritual impression of its 
beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice 
to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have 
seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so 
minutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of 
labor ; and this cathedral front seems to have been 
elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. 
Not that the result is in the least petty, but miracu- 
lously grand, and all the more so for the faithful 
beauty of the smallest details. 

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west 
front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and 
called to inquire if we wished to go into the Cathedral ; 
but as there would have been a dusky twilight be- 
neath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered 
itself within, we declined for the present. So we 
merely walked round the exterior, and thought it more 
beautiful than that of York ; though, on recollection, 
I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as that. It 
is vain to attempt a description, or seek even to record 
the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not 
impress the beholder as an inanimate object, but as 
something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 63 

its own, — a creation which man did not build, though 
in some way or other it is connected wpth him, and 
kindred to human nature. In short, I fall straightway 
to talking nonsense, when I try to express my inner 
sense of this and other cathedrals. 

While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of 
the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters; and then 
Great Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it 
was eight o'clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest 
accents that I ever heard from any bell, — slow, and 
solemn, and allowing the profound reverberations of 
each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It 
was still broad daylight in that upper region of the 
town, and would be so for some time longer; but 
the evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. 
We therefore descended the steep street, — our 
younger companion running before us, and gathering 
such headway that I fully expected him to break his 
head against some projecting wall. 

In the morning we took a fly, (an English term for 
an exceedingly sluggish vehicle,) and drove up to 
the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt 
than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted 
before the west front, and sent our charioteer in 
quest of the verger ; but, as he was not immediately 
to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We 
found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so 
grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, 
especially beneath the great central tower of the latter. 
Unless a writer intends a professedly architectural 
description, there is but one set of phrases in which 
to talk of all the cathedrals in England and elsewhere. 
They are alike in their great features : an acre or two 
of stone flags for a pavement ; rows of vast columns 



164 OUR OLD HOME. 

supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height ; great 
windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient 
or modern stained glass ; and an elaborately carved 
screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the 
vista that might else be of such glorious length, and 
which is further choked up by a massive organ, — in 
spite of which obstructions, you catch the broad, vari- 
egated glimmer of the painted east window, where a 
hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. 
Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the 
Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the 
pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out 
the Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range 
of chapels, (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but 
which have now lost their individual consecration,) 
nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, 
in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity 
to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter- 
House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is sup- 
ported by one central pillar rising from the floor, and 
putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. 
Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, ex- 
tending round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered 
tombstones, the more antique of which have had their 
inscriptions half obliterated by the feet of monks tak- 
ing their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, 
five hundred years ago. Some of these old burial- 
stones, although with ancient crosses engraved upon 
them, have been made to serve as memorials to dead 
people of very recent date. 

In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten 
bishops and knights, we saw an immense slab of 
stone purporting to be the monument of Catherine 
Swineferd, wife of John of Gaunt ; also, here was the 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 16$ 

shrine of the little Saint Hugh, that Christian child 
who was fabled to have been crucified by the Jews of 
Lincoln. The Cathedral is not particularly rich in 
monuments ; for it suffered grievous outrage and 
dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Crom- 
well's time. This latter iconoclast is in especially bad 
odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old 
churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled 
their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and 
hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the 
ancestral memorials of great families, quite at their 
wicked and plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there 
are some most exquisite and marvellous specimens of 
flowers, foliage, and grape-vines, and miracles of stone- 
work twined about arches, as if the material had been 
as soft as wax in the cunning sculptor's hands, — the 
leaves being represented with all their veins, so that 
you would almost think it petrified Nature, for which 
he sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were 
those grotesque faces which always grin at you from 
the projections of monkish architecture, as if the 
builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, 
or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless permitted to 
throw in something ineffably absurd. 

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great 
edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to 
the utmost degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable to 
think that the artists would have taken these further 
pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor 
in working out their conceptions to the extremest 
point. But, at present, the whole interior of the 
Cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the 
very meanest hue imaginable, and for which some- 
body's soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo. 



1 66 OUR OLD HOME, 

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which 
the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean, brick build- 
ing, with a locked door. Our guide, — I forgot to say 
that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and 
with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, — our 
guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of 
steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have 
taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded 
oil-carpeting, which might originally have been painted 
of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessel- 
lated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or 
pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered 
here, and has not been meddled with, further than by 
removing the superincumbent earth and rubbish. 

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded 
about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we 
saw a place where the stone pavement had been 
worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scrap- 
ing upon it, as they knelt down before a shrine of the 
Virgin. 

Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street 
of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore 
seen, bordered with houses, the high, peaked roofs of 
which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us 
to a Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a, 
fortification, and has been striding across the English 
street ever since the latter was a faint village-path, and. 
for centuries before. The arch is about four hundred 
yards from the Cathedral ; and it is to be noticed that, 
there are Roman remains in all this neighborhood, 
some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more 
beneath it ; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an inunda- 
tion of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what 
was the surface of that earlier day. The gateway which 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 67 

{ am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its 
height, and perhaps has as perfect a Roman pavement 
(if sought for at the original depth) as that which runs 
oeneath the Arch of Titus. It is a rude and massive 
structure, and seems as stalwart now as it could have 
■been two thousand years ago ; and though Time has 
gnawed it externally, he has made what amends he 
:ould by crowning its rough and broken summit with 
grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow flowers 
on the projections up and down the sides. 

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the 
Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral ; 
but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door 
of wood, and we were denied admittance because 
some part of the precincts are used as a prison. We 
now rambled about on the broad back of the hill, 
which, besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the 
site of some stately and queer old houses, and of many 
mean little hovels. I suspect that all or most of the 
life of the present day has subsided into the lower 
town, and that only priests, poor people, and prison- 
ers dwell in these upper regions. In the wide, dry 
moat at the base of the castle-wall are clustered whole 
colonies of small houses, some of brick, but the larger 
portion built of old stones which once made part of 
the Norman keep, or of Roman structures that existed 
before the Conqueror's castle was ever dreamed about. 
They are like toadstools that spring up from the mould 
of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add won- 
derfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being 
quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, 
ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high 
above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a 
bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such 



1 68 OUR OLD HOME. 

as lilacs and other flowering plants, in which its 
foundations were completely hidden. 

After walking quite round the castle, I made an 
excursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleas- 
ant and level road bordered with dwellings of various 
character. One or two were houses of gentility, with 
delightful and shadowy lawns before them ; many 
had those high, red-tiled roofs, ascending into acutely 
pointed gables, which seem to .belong to the same 
epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier 
towns ; and there were pleasant-looking cottages, 
very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense and high, 
fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the 
eaves of their thatched roofs. In front of one of these 
I saw various images, crosses, and relics of antiquity, 
among which were fragments of old Catholic tomb- 
stones, disposed by way of ornament. 

We now went home to the Saracen's Head ; and as 
the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a 
little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself 
released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But 
it had taken possession of me, and would not let me 
be at rest ; so at length I found myself compelled to 
climb the hill again, between daylight and dusk. A 
mist was now hovering about the upper height of the 
great central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate 
its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in 
the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view 
that I had had. The whole lower part of the struc- 
ture was seen with perfect distinctness ; but at the 
very summit the mist was so dense as to form an 
actual cloud, as well defined as ever I saw resting on 
a mountain-top. Really and literally, here was a 
" cloud-capt tower." 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 169 

The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a 
richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. 
The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exte- 
rior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York 
Minster ; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the 
many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to 
the pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and reecho them 
into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square 
and angular in its general effect ; but in this at Lin- 
coln there is a continual mystery of variety, so that at 
every glance you are aware of a change, and a dis- 
closure of something new, yet working an harmonious 
development of what you have heretofore seen. The 
west front is unspeakably grand, and may be read 
over and over again forever, and still show undetected 
meanings, like a great, broad page of marvellous writ- 
ing in black-letter, — so many sculptured ornaments 
there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray 
statues that have grown there since you looked last, 
and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies be- 
neath which carved images used to be, and where 
they will show themselves again, if you gaze long 
enough. — But I will not say another word about the 
Cathedral. 

We spent the rest of the day within the sombre 
precincts of the Saracen's Head, reading yesterday's 
" Times," " The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and " The 
Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the 
weather was, the street beneath our window was en- 
livened with a great bustle and turmoil of people all 
the evening, because it was Saturday night, and they 
had accomplished their week's toil, received their 
wages, and were making their small purchases against 
Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew 



170 OUR OLD HOME. 

how. A band of music passed to and fro several 
times, with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of 
the brazen trumpet and pattering on the bass-drum ; 
a spirit-shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of 
custom ; and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found 
occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold 
water that dripped into the cups. The whole breadth 
of the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge 
across the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and 
humming with human life. 

Observing in the Guide Book that a steamer runs 
on the River Witham between Lincoln and Boston, I 
inquired of the waiter, and learned that she was to 
start on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might 
be an interesting trip, and a pleasant variation of our 
customary mode of travel, we determined to make the 
voyage. The Witham flows through Lincoln, cross- 
ing the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic 
construction, a little below the Saracen's Head. It 
has more the appearance of a canal than of a river, in 
its passage through the town, — being bordered with 
hewn stone masonwork on each side, and provided 
with one or two locks. The steamer proved to be 
small, dirty, and altogether inconvenient. The early 
morning had been bright ; but the sky now lowered 
upon us with a sulky English temper, and we had not 
long put off before we felt an ugly wind from the Ger- 
man Ocean blowing right in our teeth. There were a 
number of passengers on board, country-people, such 
as travel by third class on the railway ; for, I suppose, 
nobody but ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the 
steamer for the sake of what he might happen upon 
in the way of river scenery. 

We bothered a good while about getting through a 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 7 1 

preliminary lock ; nor, when fairly under way, did we 
ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour. Constant 
delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take up 
passengers and freight, — not at regular landing-places, 
but anywhere along the green banks. The scenery 
was identical with that of the railway, because the 
latter runs along by the riverside through the whole 
distance, or nowhere departs from it except to make 
a short cut across some sinuosity ; so that our only 
advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like slothfulness 
of our progress, which allowed us time enough and to 
spare for the objects along the shore. Unfortunately, 
there was nothing, or next to nothing, to be seen, — 
the country being one unvaried level over the whole 
thirty miles of our voyage, — not a hill in sight, either 
near or far, except that solitary one on the summit of 
which we had left Lincoln Cathedral. And the Ca- 
thedral was our landmark for four hours or more, and 
at last rather faded out than was hidden by any inter- 
vening object. 

It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if 
the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in 
our faces, and chilled us through, in spite of the sun- 
shine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. 
These English east-winds, which prevail from Feb- 
ruary till June, are greater nuisances than the east- 
wind of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not 
bring mist and storm, as with us, but some of the sun- 
niest weather that England sees. Under their influ- 
ence, the sky smiles and is villanous. 

The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had 
an English character that was abundantly worth our 
looking at. A green luxuriance of early grass ; old, 
high-roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone 



1^2 OUR OLD HOME. 

barns and ricks of hay and grain ; ancient villages, 
with the square, gray tower of a church seen afar over 
the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs ; here 
and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, sur- 
rounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan hall, 
though it looked more like the abode of some rich 
yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a mediaeval 
castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Cromwell, but 
whether of the Protector's family I cannot tell. But 
the gentry do not appear to have settled multitudi- 
nously in this tract of country ; nor is it to be wondered 
at, since a lover of the picturesque would as soon 
think of settling in Holland. The river retains its 
canal-like aspect all along ; and only in the latter part 
of its course does it become more than wide enough 
for the little steamer to turn itself round, — at broad- 
est, not more than twice that width. 

The only memorable incident of our voyage hap- 
pened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet 
of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer 
went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into 
great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I 
saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to 
the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, 
since I could not possibly avert it. The poor duck- 
lings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with all 
their tiny might to escape : four of them, I believe, were 
washed aside and thrown off unhurt from the steamer's 
prow ; but the fifth must have gone under the whole 
length of the keel, and never could have come up 
alive. 

At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower 
of Saint Botolph's Church (three hundred feet high, 
the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Ca- 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 73 

thedral) looming in the distance. At about half-past 
four we reached Boston, (which name has been short- 
ened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly 
English pronunciation, from Botolplrs town,) and 
were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market- 
place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor 
one enough ; and we were shown into a small, stifled 
parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco- 
smoke, — tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter 
assured us that the room had not more recently been 
fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, 
apparently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans 
of this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who 
people the daughter-city in New England. Our parlor 
had the one recommendation of looking into the mar- 
ket-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the tall 
spire and noble old church. 

In my first ramble about the town, chance led me to 
the riverside, at that quarter where the port is situated. 
Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned aspect, 
seemingly warehouses, with windows in the high, 
steep roofs. The Custom-House found ample accom- 
modation within an ordinary dwelling-house. Two or 
three large schooners were moored along the river's 
brink, which had here a stone margin ; another large 
and handsome schooner was evidently just finished, 
rigged and equipped for her first voyage ; the rudi- 
ments of another were on the stocks, in a shipyard 
bordering on the river. Still another, while I was 
looking on, came up the stream, and lowered her 
mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old man on the 
bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo; but 
the Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of talk- 
ing English that I could not understand the reply. 



174 OUR OLD HOME. 

Farther down the river, I saw a brig, approaching 
rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd 
impression of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and 
a remnant of wholesome life ; and I could not but 
contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of 
our own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of 
this old English town ; — the latter, perhaps, almost 
stationary ever since that day, as if the birth of such 
an offspring had taken away its own principle of 
growth. I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, 
and Washington Street, and the Great Elm, and the 
State House, and exulted lustily, — but yet began to 
feel at home in this good old town, for its very name's 
sake, as I never had before felt, in England. 

The next morning we came out in the early sunshine, 
(the sun must have been shining nearly four hours, 
however, for it was after eight o'clock,) and strolled 
about the streets, like people who had a right to be 
there. The market-place of Boston is an irregular 
square, into one end of which the chancel of the 
church slightly projects. The gates of the church- 
yard were open and free to all passengers, and the 
common footway of the towns-people seems to lie to 
and fro across it. It is paved, according to English 
custom, with flat tombstones ; and there are also 
raised or altar tombs, some of which have armorial 
bearings on them. One clergyman has caused himself 
and his wife to be buried right in the middle of the 
stone-bordered path that traverses the churchyard ; 
so that not an individual of the thousands who pass 
along this public way can help trampling over him or 
her. The scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in 
the morning sun : people going about their business 
in the day's primal freshness, which was just as fresh 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 75 

here as in younger villages ; children, with milk-pails, 
loitering over the burial-stones ; school-boys playing 
leap-frog with the altar-tombs ; the simple old town 
preparing itself for the day, which would be like myr- 
iads of other days that had passed over it, but yet 
would be worth living through. And down on the 
churchyard, where were buried many generations 
whom it remembered in their time, looked the stately 
tower of Saint Botolph ; and it was good to see and 
think of such an age-long giant, intermarrying the 
present epoch with a distant past, and getting quite 
imbued with human nature by being so immemorially 
connected with men's familiar knowledge and homely 
interests. It is a noble tower; and the jackdaws 
evidently have pleasant homes in their hereditary 
nests among its topmost windows, and live delightful 
lives, flitting and cawing about its pinnacles and flying 
buttresses. 1 should almost like to be a jackdaw 
myself, for the sake of living up there. 

In front of the church, not more than twenty yards 
off, and with a low brick wall between, flows the River 
Witham. On the hither bank a fisherman was wash- 
ing his boat ; and another skiff, with her sail lazily 
half-twisted, lay on the opposite strand. The stream, 
at this point, is about of such width, that, if the tall 
tower were to tumble over flat on its face, its top- 
stone might perhaps reach to the middle of the 
channel. On the farther shore there is a line of 
antique-looking houses, with roofs of red tile, and 
windows opening out of them, — some of these 
dwellings being so ancient, that the Reverend Mr. 
Cotton, subsequently our first Boston minister, must 
have seen them with his own bodily eyes, when he 
used to issue from the front-portal after service. 



176 OUR OLD HOME. 

Indeed, there must be very many houses here, and even 
some streets, that bear much the aspect that they did 
when the Puritan divine paced solemnly among them, 

In our rambles about town, we went into a booksell- 
er's shop to inquire if he had any description of Bos- 
ton for sale. He offered me (or rather, produced for 
inspection, not supposing that I would buy it) a quarto 
history of the town, published by subscription, nearly 
forty years ago. The bookseller showed himself a 
well-informed and affable man, and a local antiquary, 
to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were a god- 
send. He had met with several Americans, who, at 
various times, had come on pilgrimages to this place, 
and he had been in correspondence with others. 
Happening to have heard the name of one member 
of our party, he showed us great courtesy and kind- 
ness, and invited us into his inner domicile, where, as 
he modestly intimated, he kept a few articles which it 
might interest us to see. So we went with him through 
the shop, up-stairs, into the private part of his estab- 
lishment ; and, really, it was one of the rarest adven- 
tures I ever met with, to stumble upon this treasure 
of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and curiosi- 
ties, veiled behind the unostentatious front of a book- 
seller's shop, in a very moderate line of village business. 
The two up-stair rooms into which he introduced us 
were so crowded with inestimable articles, that we were 
almost afraid to stir, for fear of breaking some fragile 
thing that had been accumulating value for unknown 
centuries. 

The apartment was hung round with pictures and 
old engravings, many of which were extremely rare. 
Premising that he was going to show us something 
very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 77 

returned with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately 
embroidered with silk, which so profusely covered the 
linen that the general effect was as if the main texture 
were silken. It was stained, and seemed very old, and 
had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought all over 
with birds and flowers in a most delicate style of 
needlework, and among other devices, more than 
once repeated, was the cipher, M. S., — being the 
initials of one of the most unhappy names that ever 
a woman bore. This quilt was embroidered by the 
hands of Mary Queen of Scots, during her imprison- 
ment at Fotheringay Castle ; and having evidently 
been a work of years, she had doubtless shed many 
tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and 
abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds 
and flowers. As a counterpart to this most precious 
relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a 
former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Captain 
Cook : it was a bag, cunningly made of some deli- 
cate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. 
Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of very 
antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket- 
holes with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and 
silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, 
by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) was 
once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh : 
but that great statesman must have been a person of 
very moderate girth in the chest and waist ; for the 
garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a 
boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who 
tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter 
produced some curiously engraved drinking-glasses, 
with a view of Saint Botolph's steeple on one of them, 
and other Boston edifices, public or domestic, on the 



178 OUR OLD HOME. 

remaining two, very admirably done. These crystal 
goblets had been a present, long ago, to an old mas- 
ter of the Free School from his pupils ; and it is very 
rarely, I imagine, that a retired schoolmaster can 
exhibit such trophies of gratitude and affection, won 
from the victims of his birch rod. 

Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected 
and wholly unexpectable thing after another, as if he 
were a magician, and had only to fling a private sig- 
nal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand 
forth any strange relic we might choose to ask for. 
He was especially rich in drawings by the Old 
Masters, producing two or three, of exquisite deli- 
cacy, by Raphael, one by Salvator, a head by 
Rembrandt, and others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, 
by Giordano, Benvenuto Cellini, and hands almost 
as famous ; and besides what were shown us, 
there seemed to be an endless supply of these art- 
treasures in reserve. On the wall hung a crayon- 
portrait of Sterne, never engraved, representing him 
as a rather young man, blooming, and not uncomely : 
it was the worldly face of a man fond of pleasure, but 
without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd expression that 
we see in his only engraved portrait. The picture is 
an original, and must needs be very valuable ; and we 
wish it might be prefixed to some new and worthier 
biography of a writer whose character the world has 
always treated with singular harshness, considering 
how much it owes him. There was likewise a crayon- 
portrait of Sterne's wife, looking so haughty and un- 
amiable, that the wonder is, not that he ultimately 
left her, but how he ever contrived to live a week 
with such an awful woman. 

After looking at these, and a great many more 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 79 

things than I can remember, above stairs, we went 
down to a parlor, where this wonderful bookseller 
opened an old cabinet, containing numberless drawers, 
and looking just fit to be the repository of such knick- 
knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to 
possess more treasures than he himself knew of, or 
knew where to find ; but, rummaging here and there, 
he brought forth things new and old : rose-nobles, 
Victoria crowns, gold angels, double-sovereigns of 
George IV., two-guinea pieces of George II. ; a 
marriage-medal of the first Napoleon, only forty-five 
of which were ever struck off, and of which even the 
British Museum does not contain a specimen like 
this, in gold ; a brass medal, three or four inches in 
diameter, of a Roman emperor ; together with buckles, 
bracelets, amulets, and I know not what besides. 
There was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen 
Mary's bed at Holyrood Palace. There were illumi- 
nated missals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may 
seem of especial interest to the historian) a Secret- 
Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for 
aught I know, by her own hand. On examination, 
however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but 
recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all 
such matters of housewifery, the toilet, and domestic 
quackery, among which we were horrified by the title 
of one of the nostrums, " How to kill a Fellow 
quickly 11 ! We never doubted that bloody Queen 
Bess might often have had occasion for such a recipe, 
but wondered at her frankness, and at her attending to 
these anomalous necessities in such a methodical 
way. The truth is, we had read amiss, and the Queen 
had spelt amiss : the word was " Fellon, 11 — a sort of 
whitlow, — not " Fellow. 11 



l8o OUR OLD HOME. 

Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of 
wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabi- 
net ; and while sipping it, we ungratefully tried to 
excite his envy, by telling of various things, interest- 
ing to an antiquary and virtuoso, which we had seen 
in the course of our travels about England. We 
spoke, for instance, of a missal bound in solid gold 
and set around with jewels, but of such intrinsic value 
as no setting could enhance, for it was exquisitely 
illuminated, throughout, by the hand of Raphael him- 
self. We mentioned a little silver case which once 
contained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV. nicely 
done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror and 
astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly 
morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told 
about the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the 
Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which 
into our hands, it opened of itself at the Communion 
Service ; and there, on the left-hand page, appeared a 
spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yellowish or 
brownish hue : a drop of the King's blood had fallen 
there. 

Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but 
first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old 
John Cotton's vicarage had stood till a very short 
time since. According to our friend's description, it 
was a humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of 
brick, with a thatched roof. The site is now rudely 
fenced in, and cultivated as a vegetable garden. In 
the right-hand aisle of the church there is an ancient 
chapel, which, at the time of our visit, was in process 
of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, 
whom these English people consider as the founder 
of our American Boston. It would contain a painted 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. i8l 

memorial-window, in honor of the old Puritan minister. 
A festival in commemoration of the event was to take 
place in the ensuing July, to which I had myself 
received an invitation, but I knew too well the pains 
and penalties incurred by an invited guest at public 
festivals in England to accept it. It ought to be 
recorded, (and it seems to have made a very kindly 
impression on our kinsfolk here,) that five hundred 
pounds had been contributed by persons in the United 
States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of the 
memorial-window, and the repair and restoration of 
the chapel. 

After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap- 
proached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly intro- 
duced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger's 
benediction rest upon him ! He is a most pleasant 
man ; rather, I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary ; 
for he seemed to value the Queen of Otaheite's bag 
as highly as Queen Mary's embroidered quilt, and to 
have an omnivorous appetite for everything strange 
and rare. Would that we could fill up his shelves and 
drawers (if there are any vacant spaces left) with the 
choicest trifles that have dropped out of Time's carpet- 
bag, or give him the carpet-bag itself, to take out 
what he will! 

The vicar looked about thirty years old, a gentle- 
man, evidently assured of his position, (as clergymen 
of the Established Church invariably are,) comfortable 
and well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be 
a bishop, knowing how to make the most of life with- 
out prejudice to the life to come. I was glad to see 
such a model English priest so suitably accommodated 
with an old English church. He kindly and cour- 
teously did the honors, showing us quite round the 



1 82 OUR OLD HOME. 

interior, giving us all the information that we re- 
quired, and then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of 
what we came to see. 

The interior of Saint Botolph's is very fine and 
satisfactory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has 
been repaired — so far as repairs were necessary — 
in a chaste and noble style. The great eastern 
window is of modern painted glass, but is the richest, 
mellowest, and tenderest modern window that I have 
ever seen : the art of painting these glowing trans- 
parencies in pristine perfection being one that the 
world has lost. The vast, clear space of the interior 
church delighted me. There was no screen, — 
nothing between the vestibule and the altar to break 
the long vista ; even the organ stood aside, — though 
it by and by made us aware of its presence by a 
melodious roar. Around the walls there were old 
engraved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster 
knight of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each 
recumbent at full length, as large as life, and in per- 
fect preservation, except for a slight modern touch 
at the tips of their noses. In the chancel we saw a 
great deal of oaken work, quaintly and admirably 
carved, especially about the seats formerly appropri- 
ated to the monks, which were so contrived as to 
tumble down with a tremendous crash, if the occupant 
happened to fall asleep. 

We now essayed to climb into the upper regions. 
Up we went, winding and still winding round the 
circular stairs, till we came to the gallery beneath the 
stone roof of the tower, whence we could look down 
and see the raised Font, and my Talma lying on one 
of the steps, and looking about as big as a pocket- 
handkerchief. Then up again, up, up, up, through a 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 83 

yet smaller staircase, till we emerged into another 
stone gallery, above the jackdaws, and far above the 
roof beneath which we had before made a halt. Then 
up another flight, which led us into a pinnacle of the 
temple, but not the highest ; so, retracing our steps, 
we took the right turret this time, and emerged into 
the loftiest lantern, where we saw level Lincolnshire, 
far and near, though with a haze on the distant hori- 
zon. There were dusty roads, a river, and canals, 
converging towards Boston, which — a congregation 
of red-tiled roofs — lay beneath our feet, with pigmy 
people creeping about its narrow streets. We were 
three hundred feet aloft, and the pinnacle on which 
we stood is a landmark forty miles at sea. 

Content, and weary of our elevation, we descended 
the corkscrew stairs and left the church ; the last ob- 
ject that we noticed in the interior being a bird, which 
appeared to be at home there, and responded with its 
cheerful notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on 
the church-steps, we observed that there were formerly 
two statues, one on each side of the doorway; the 
canopies still remaining, and the pedestals being 
about a yard from the ground. Some of Mr. Cotton's 
Puritan parishioners are probably responsible for the 
disappearance of these stone saints. This doorway at 
the base of the tower is now much dilapidated, but must 
once have been very rich and of a peculiar fashion. 
It opens its arch through a -great square tablet of 
stone, reared against the front of the tower. On most 
of the projections, whether on the tower or about the 
body of the church, there are gargoyles of genuine 
Gothic grotesqueness, — fiends, beasts, angels, and 
combinations of all three ; and where portions of the 
edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have tried 



184 OUR OLD HOME. 

to imitate these wild fantasies, but with very poor suc- 
cess. Extravagance and absurdity have still their 
law, and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the 
primmest things on earth. 

In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed the 
river by a bridge, and observed that the larger part of 
the town seems to lie on that side of its navigable 
stream. The crooked streets and narrow lanes re- 
minded me much of Hanover Street, Ann Street, 
and other portions of the North End of our American 
Boston, as I remember that picturesque region in my 
boyish days. It is not unreasonable to suppose that 
the local habits and recollections of the first settlers 
may have had some influence on the physical char- 
acter of the streets and houses in the New England 
metropolis ; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy of 
bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked and 
projecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see 
there. It is singular what a home-feeling and sense 
of kindred I derived from this hereditary connection 
and fancied physiognomical resemblance between the 
old town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluc- 
tant I was, after chill years of banishment, to leave 
this hospitable place, on that account. Moreover, it 
recalled some of the features of another American 
town, my own dear native place, when I saw the sea- 
faring people leaning against posts, and sitting on 
planks, under the lee of warehouses, — or lolling on 
long-boats, drawn up high and dry, as sailors and old 
wharf-rats are accustomed to do, in seaports of little 
business. In other respects, the English town is more 
village-like than either of the American ones. The 
women and budding girls chat together at their doors, 
and exchange merry greetings with young men ; chil- 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 1 85 

dren chase one another in the summer twilight ; school- 
boys sail little boats on the river, or play at marbles 
across the flat tombstones in the churchyard ; and 
ancient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wander 
slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of 
deportment, as if each one were everybody's grand- 
father. I have frequently observed, in old English 
towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully and 
genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where 
the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth 
are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires 
begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe 
in such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery 
heads in solitude. Speaking of old men, I am re- 
minded of the scholars of the Boston Charity-School,- 
who walk about in antique, long-skirted blue coats, 
and knee-breeches, and with bands at their necks, — 
perfect and grotesque pictures of the costume of three 
centuries ago. 

On the morning of our departure, I looked from the 
parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, 
and beheld its irregular square already well covered 
with booths, and more in process of being put up, by 
stretching tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market- 
day. The dealers were arranging their commodities, 
consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which 
seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there 
was a much greater variety of merchandise : basket- 
work, both for fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, 
oranges, rustic attire ; all sorts of things, in short, 
that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the 
lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and 
found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and 
pigs, in another part of the town. A crowd of towns- 



1 86 OUR OLD HOME. 

people and Lincolnshire yeomen elbowed one another 
in the square ; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one cor- 
ner, and a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his 
exhibition in another : so that my final glimpse of 
Boston was calculated to leave a livelier impression 
than my former ones. Meanwhile the tower of Saint 
BotolprTs looked benignantly down ; and I fancied 
it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two 
or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe 
its venerable height, and the town beneath it, to the 
people of the American city, who are partly akin, if 
not to the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to 
some of the dust that lies in its churchyard. 

One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the 
vicinity of their town ; and (what could hardly be ex- 
pected of an English community) seem proud to think 
that their neighborhood has given name to our first 
and most widely celebrated and best remembered 
battlefield. 



NEAR OXFORD. 1 87 



NEAR OXFORD. 

On a fine morning in September, we set out on an 
excursion to Blenheim, — the sculptor and myself 
being seated on the box of our four-horse carriage, 
two more of the party in the dicky, and the others less 
agreeably accommodated inside. We had no coach- 
man, but two postilions in short scarlet jackets and 
leather breeches with top-boots, each astride of a 
horse ; so that, all the way along, when not otherwise 
attracted, we had the interesting spectacle of their up- 
and-down bobbing in the saddle. It was a sunny and 
beautiful day, a specimen of the perfect English 
weather, just warm enough for comfort, — indeed, a 
little too warm, perhaps, in the noontide sun, — yet 
retaining a mere spice or suspicion of austerity, which 
made it all the more enjoyable. 

The country between Oxford and Blenheim is not 
particularly interesting, being almost level, or undulat- 
ing very slightly ; nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, a 
rich part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, 
and I especially remember a picturesque old gabled 
house at a turnpike-gate, and, altogether, the wayside 
scenery had an aspect of old-fashioned English life ; 
but there was nothing very memorable till we reached 
Woodstock, and stopped to water our horses at the 
Black Bear. This neighborhood is called New Wood- 
stock, but has by no means the brand-new appearance 
of an American town, being a large village of stone 



1 88 OUR OLD HOME. 

houses, most of them pretty well time-worn and 
weather-stained. The Black Bear is an ancient inn, 
large and respectable, with balustraded staircases, and 
intricate passages and corridors, and queer old pictures 
and engravings hanging in the entries and apartments. 
We ordered a lunch (the most delightful of English 
institutions, next to dinner) to be ready against our 
return, and then resumed our drive to Blenheim. 

The park-gate of Blenheim stands close to the end 
of the village-street of Woodstock. Immediately on 
passing through its portals, we saw the stately palace 
in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park 
before approaching it. This noble park contains three 
thousand acres of land, and is fourteen miles in cir- 
cumference. Having been, in part, a royal domain 
before it was granted to the Marlborough family, it 
contains many trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has 
doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for 
centuries. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding 
in the open lawns and glades ; and the stags tossed 
their antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but 
only shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a 
magnificent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor 
rigidly subjected within rule, but vast enough to have 
lapsed back into Nature again, after all the pains that 
the landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne's time be- 
stowed on it, when the domain of Blenheim was 
scientifically laid out. The great, knotted, slanting, 
trunks of the old oaks do not now look as if man had 
much intermeddled with their growth and postures. 
The trees of later date, that were set out in the Great 
Duke's time, are arranged on the plan of the order of 
battle in which the illustrious commander ranked his 
troops at Blenheim ; but the ground covered is so ex- 



NEAR OXFORD. 1 89 

tensive, and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spec- 
tator is not disagreeably conscious of their standing in 
military array, as if Orpheus had summoned them to- 
gether by beat of drum. The effect must have been 
very formal a hundred and fifty years ago, but has 
ceased to be so, — although the trees, I presume, have 
kept their ranks with even more fidelity than Marl- 
borough's veterans did. 

One of the park-keepers, on horseback, rode beside 
our carriage, pointing out the choice views, and 
glimpses at the palace, as we drove through the ( 
domain. There is a very large artificial lake, (to say 
the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being com- 
pared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those 
of Westmoreland,) which was created by Capability 
Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just 
as if Nature had poured these broad waters into one 
of her own valleys. It is a most beautiful object at a 
distance, and not less so on its immediate banks ; for 
the water is very pure, being supplied by a small river, 
of the choicest transparency, which was turned thither- 
ward for the purpose. And Blenheim owes not merely 
this water-scenery, but almost all its other beauties, to 
the contrivance of man. Its natural features are not 
striking ; but Art has effected such wonderful things 
that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that 
nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought 
of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more 
for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape- 
gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done 
for the monotonous surface of Blenheim, — making 
the most of every undulation, — flinging down a hill- 
ock, a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wher- 
ever it was needed, — putting in beauty as often as 



190 OUR OLD HOME. 

there was a niche for it, — opening vistas to every 
point that deserved to be seen, and throwing a veil of 
impenetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden ; 
— and then, to be sure, the lapse of a century has 
softened the harsh outline of man's labors, and has 
given the place back to Nature again with the addition 
of what consummate science could achieve. 

After driving a good way, we came to a battle- 
mented tower and adjoining house, which used to be 
the residence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who 
held charge of the property for the King before the 
Duke of Marlborough possessed it. The keeper 
opened the door for us, and in the entrance-hall we 
found various things that had to do with the chase 
and woodland sports. We mounted the staircase, 
through several stories, up to the top of the tower, 
whence there was a view of the spires of Oxford, and 
of points much farther off, — very indistinctly seen, 
however, as is usually the case with the misty distances 
of England. Returning to the ground-floor, we were 
ushered into the room in which died Wilmot, the 
wicked Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of the 
Park in Charles II. 's time. It is a low and bare little 
room, with a window in front, and a smaller one be- 
hind ; and in the contiguous entrance-room there are 
the remains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy 
of which, perhaps, Rochester may have made the 
penitent end that Bishop Burnet attributes to him. I 
hardly know what it is, in this poor fellow's character, 
which affects us with greater tenderness on his behalf 
than for all the other profligates of his day, who seem 
to have been neither better nor' worse than himself. 
I rather suspect that he had a human heart which 
never quite died out of him, and the warmth of which 



NEAR OXFORD. 191 

is still faintly perceptible amid the dissolute trash 
which he left behind. 

Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish 
man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, 
with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all 
the seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ramble 
in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, catch- 
ing glimpses of the palace in new points of view, and 
by and by came to Rosamond's Well. The particular 
tradition that connects Fair Rosamond with it is not 
now in my memory ; but if Rosamond ever lived and 
loved, and ever had her abode in the maze of Wood- 
stock, it may well be believed that she and Henry 
sometimes sat beside this spring. It gushes out from 
a bank, through some old stone-work, and dashes its 
little cascade (about as abundant as one might turn 
out of a large pitcher) into a pool, whence it steals 
away towards the lake, which is not far removed. 
The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure as the 
legendary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to pos- 
sess medicinal virtues, like springs at which saints 
have quenched their thirst. There were two or three 
old women and some children in attendance with 
tumblers, which they present to visitors, full of the 
consecrated water ; but most of us filled the tumblers 
for ourselves, and drank. 

Thence we drove to the Triumphal Pillar which was 
erected in honor of the Great Duke, and on the sum- 
mit of which he stands, in a Roman garb, holding a 
winged figure of Victory in his hand, as an ordinary- 
man might hold a bird. The column is I know not 
how many feet high, but lofty enough, at any rate, to 
elevate Marlborough far above the rest of the world, 
and to be visible a long way off; and it is so placed 



I92 OUR OLD HOME. 

in reference to other objects, that, wherever the hero 
wandered about his grounds, and especially as he 
issued from his mansion, he must inevitably have been 
reminded of his glory. In truth, until I came to Blen- 
heim, I never had so positive and material an idea of 
what Fame really is — of what the admiration of his 
country can do for a successful warrior — as I carry 
away with me and shall always retain. Unless he had 
the moral force of a thousand men together, his egotism 
(beholding himself everywhere, imbuing the entire 
soil, growing in the woods, rippling and gleaming in 
the water, and pervading the very air with his great- 
ness) must have been swollen within him like the liver 
of a Strasbourg goose. On the huge tablets inlaid 
into the pedestal of the column, the entire Act of Par- 
liament, bestowing Blenheim on the Duke of Marl- 
borough and his posterity, is engraved in deep letters, 
painted black on the marble ground. The pillar 
stands exactly a mile from the principal front of the 
palace, in a straight line with the precise centre of its 
entrance-hall ; so that, as already said, it was the 
Duke's principal object of contemplation. 

We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a great 
pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giv- 
ing admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, 
elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared 
at the entrance, and took possession of whatever canes, 
umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of, in order 
to claim sixpence on our departure. This had a some- 
what ludicrous effect. There is much public outcry 
against the meanness of the present Duke in his 
arrangements for the admission of visitors (chiefly, of 
course, his native countrymen) to view the magnifi- 
cent palace which their forefathers bestowed upon 



NEAR OXFORD. 1 93 

his own. In many cases, it seems hard that a private 
abode should be exposed to the intrusion of the public 
merely because the proprietor has inherited or created 
a splendor which attracts general curiosity ; insomuch 
that his home loses its sanctity and seclusion for the 
very reason that it is better than other men's houses. 
But in the case of Blenheim, the public have certainly 
an equitable claim to admission, both because the 
fame of its first inhabitant is a national possession, and 
because the mansion was a national gift, one of the 
purposes of which was to be a token of gratitude and 
glory to the English people themselves. If a man 
chooses to be illustrious, he is very likely to incur some 
little inconveniences himself, and entail them on his 
posterity. Nevertheless, his present Grace of Marl- 
borough absolutely ignores the public claim above 
suggested, and (with a thrift of which even the hero 
of Blenheim himself did not set the example) sells 
tickets admitting six persons at ten shillings : if only 
one person enters the gate, he must pay for six ; and 
if there are seven in company, two tickets are required 
to admit them. The attendants, who meet you every- 
where in the park and palace, expect fees on their own 
private account, — their noble master pocketing the 
ten shillings. But, to be sure, the visitor gets his 
money's worth, since it buys him the right to speak 
just as freely of the Duke of Marlborough as if he 
were the keeper of the Cremorne Gardens. 1 

1 The above was written two or three years ago, or more ; 
and the Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to 
his successor, who, we understand, has adopted much more 
liberal arrangements. There is seldom anything to criticize 
or complain of, as regards the facility of obtaining admission 
to interesting private houses in England. 



194 OUR OLD HOME. 

Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of 
the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic 
front of the palace, with its two projecting wings. We 
ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and were ad- 
mitted into the entrance-hall, the height of which, from 
floor to ceiling, is not much less than seventy feet, 
being the entire elevation of the edifice. The hall is 
lighted by windows in the upper story, and, it being a 
clear, bright day, was very radiant with lofty sunshine, 
amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro. The 
ceiling was painted by Sir James Thornhill in some 
allegorical design, (doubtless commemorative of Marl- 
borough's victories,) the purport of which I did not 
take the trouble to make out, — contenting myself with 
the general effect, which was most splendidly and effec- 
tively ornamental. 

We were guided through the show-rooms by a very 
civil person, who allowed us to take pretty much our 
own time in looking at the pictures. The collection is 
exceedingly valuable, — many of these works of Art 
having been presented to the Great Duke by the 
crowned heads of England or the Continent. One 
room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens; and 
there were works of Raphael, and many other famous 
painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illus- 
trate the meanest house that might contain it. I re- 
member none of them, however, (not being in a 
picture-seeing mood,) so well as Vandyck's large and 
familiar picture of Charles I. on horseback, with a 
figure and face of melancholy dignity such as never by 
any other hand was put on canvas. Yet, on consid- 
ering this face of Charles (which I find often repeated 
in half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal into 
literalism, I doubt whether the unfortunate king was 



NEAR OXFORD. 1 95 

really a handsome or impressive-looking man : a high, 
thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish 
hair and beard, — these are the literal facts. It is the 
painter's art that has thrown such pensive and shad- 
owy grace around him. 

On our passage through this beautiful suite of apart- 
ments, we saw, through the vista of open doorways, a 
boy of ten or twelve years old coming towards us 
from the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, a 
linen sack that had certainly been washed and re- 
washed for a summer or two, and gray trousers a 
good deal worn, — a dress, in short, which an Ameri- 
can mother in middle station would have thought too 
shabby for her darling schoolboy's ordinary wear. 
This urchin's face was rather pale, (as those of 
English children are apt to be, quite as often as our 
own,) but he had pleasant eyes, an intelligent look, 
and an agreeable, boyish manner. It was Lord 
Sunderland, grandson of the present Duke, and heir 
— though not, I think, in the direct line — of the 
blood of the great Marlborough, and of the title and 
estate. 

After passing through the first suite of rooms, we 
were conducted through a corresponding suite on the 
opposite side of the entrance-hall. These latter apart- 
ments are most richly adorned with tapestries, wrought 
and presented to the first Duke by a sisterhood of 
Flemish nuns ; they look like great, glowing pictures, 
and completely cover the walls of the rooms. The 
designs purport to represent the Duke's battles and 
sieges ; and everywhere we see the hero himself, 
as large as life, and as gorgeous in scarlet and gold 
as the holy sisters could make him, with a three- 
cornered hat and flowing wig, reining in his horse, 



196 OUR OLD HOME. 

and extending his leading-staff in the attitude of 
command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is 
the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, 
there can never have been anything more magnificent 
than these tapestries ; and, considered as works of 
Art, they have quite as much merit as nine pictures 
out of ten. 

One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the 
library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective 
length from end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter 
and more cheerful than that of most libraries : a won- 
derful contrast to the old college-libraries of Oxford, 
and perhaps less sombre and suggestive of thought- 
fulness than any large library ought to be ; inasmuch 
as so many studious brains as have left their deposit 
on the shelves cannot have conspired without pro- 
ducing a very serious and ponderous result. Both 
walls and ceiling are white, and there are elaborate 
doorways and fireplaces of white marble. The floor 
is of oak, so highly polished that our feet slipped 
upon it as if it had been New-England ice. At one 
end of the room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her 
royal robes, which are so admirably designed and 
exquisitely wrought that the spectator certainly gets 
a strong conception of her royal dignity ; while the 
face of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys 
a suitable idea of her personal character. The marble 
of this work, long as it has stood there, is as white as 
snow just fallen, and must have required most faithful 
and religious care to keep it so. As for the volumes of 
the library, they are wired within the cases and turn 
their gilded backs upon the visitor, keeping their treas- 
ures of wit and wisdom just as intangible as if still in 
the unwrought mines of human thought. 



NEAR OXFORD. 1 97 

I remember nothing else in the palace, except the 
chapel, to which we were conducted last, and where we 
saw a splendid monument to the first Duke and Duchess, 
sculptured by Rysbrach, at the cost, it is said, of forty 
thousand pounds. The design includes the statues of 
the deceased dignitaries, and various allegorical flour- 
ishes, fantasies, and confusions ; and beneath sleep the 
great Duke and his proud wife, their veritable bones 
and dust, and probably all the Marlboroughs that have 
since died. It is not quite a comfortable idea, that 
these mouldy ancestors still inhabit, after their fashion, 
the house where their successors spend the passing day ; 
but the adulation lavished upon the hero of Blenheim 
could not have been consummated, unless the palace 
of his lifetime had become likewise a stately mauso- 
leum over his remains, — and such we felt it all to be, 
after gazing at his tomb. 

The next business was to see the private gardens. 
An old Scotch under-gardener admitted us and led 
the way, and seemed to have a fair prospect of earn- 
ing the fee all by himself ; but by and by another 
respectable Scotchman made his appearance and 
took us in charge, proving to be the head-gardener 
in person. He was extremely intelligent and agree- 
able, talking both scientifically and lovingly about 
trees and plants, of which there is every variety capa- 
ble of English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of 
Eden cannot have been more beautiful than this pri- 
vate garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred 
acres, and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, 
and the undulations, and the skilfully interposed 
clumps of trees, is made to appear limitless. The 
sylvan delights of a whole country are compressed 
into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to 



198 OUR OLD HOME. 

the concoction of an ounce of precious attar. The 
world within that garden-fence is not the same weary 
and dusty world with which we outside mortals are 
conversant ; it is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious 
Nature ; and the Great Mother lends herself kindly 
to the gardener's will, knowing that he will make 
evident the half-obliterated traits of her pristine and 
ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit and 
praise to herself. I doubt whether there is ever any 
winter within that precinct, — any clouds, except the 
fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there 
rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal. 
The lawns and glades are like the memory of places 
where one has wandered when first in love. 

What a good and happy life might be spent in a 
paradise like this ! And yet, at that very moment, 
the besotted Duke (ah ! I have let out a secret which 
I meant to keep to myself; but the ten shillings must 
pay for all) was in that very garden, (for the guide 
told us so, and cautioned our young people not to be 
uproarious,) and, if in a condition for arithmetic, 
was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten- 
shilling tickets had that day been sold. Republican 
as I am, I should still love to think that noblemen 
lead noble lives, and that all this stately and beautiful 
environment may serve to elevate them a little way 
above the rest of us. If it fail to do so, the disgrace 
falls equally upon the whole race of mortals as on 
themselves ; because it proves that no more favor- 
able conditions of existence would eradicate our vices 
and weaknesses. How sad, if this be so ! Even a 
herd of swine, eating the acorns under those magnifi- 
cent oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and. of 
better habits than ordinary swine. 



NEAR OXFORD. 



199 



Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a 
description of Blenheim ; and I hate to leave it with- 
out some more adequate expression of the noble edifice, 
with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that beautiful 
sunshine ; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hun- 
dred years, it could not have been a finer one. But I 
must give up the attempt ; only further remarking that 
the finest trees here were cedars, of which I saw one 
— and there may have been many such — immense in 
girth, and not less than three centuries old. I like- 
wise saw a vast heap of laurel, two hundred feet in 
circumference, all growing from one root ; and the 
gardener offered to show us another growth of twice 
that stupendous size. If the Great Duke himself had 
been buried in that spot, his heroic heart could not 
have been the seed of a more plentiful crop of laurels. 

We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat 
down to a cold collation, of which we ate abundantly, 
and drank (in the good old English fashion) a due 
proportion of various delightful liquors. A stranger 
in England, in his rambles to various quarters of the 
country, may learn little in regard to wines, (for the 
ordinary English taste is simple, though sound, in 
that particular,) but he makes acquaintance with 
more varieties of hop and malt liquor than he pre- 
viously supposed to exist. I remember a sort of 
foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very 
vivacious, and appears to be a hybrid between ale and 
bottled cider. Another excellent tipple for warm 
weather is concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter 
ale with ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the 
heavier liquor from its depths, forming a compound 
of singular vivacity and sufficient body. But of all 
things ever brewed from malt, (unless it be the Trinity 



200 OUR OLD HOME. 

Ale of Cambridge, which I drank long afterwards, and 
which Barry Cornwall has celebrated in immortal 
verse,) commend me to the Archdeacon, as the Ox- 
ford scholars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary 
who first taught these erudite worthies how to brew 
their favorite nectar. John Barleycorn has given his 
very heart to this admirable liquor ; it is a superior 
kind of ale, the Prince of Ales, with a richer flavor 
and a mightier spirit than you can find elsewhere in 
this weary world. Much have we been strengthened 
and encouraged by the potent blood of the Archdeacon ! 
A few years after our excursion to Blenheim, the 
same party set forth, in two flies, on a tour to some 
other places of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford. 
It was again a delightful day; and, in truth, every 
day, of late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if 
each must be the very last of such perfect weather ; 
and yet the long succession had given us confidence 
in as many more to come. The climate of England 
has been shamefully maligned ; its sulkiness and 
asperities are not nearly so offensive as Englishmen 
tell us (their climate being the only attribute of their 
country which they never overvalue) ; and the really 
good summer weather is the very kindest and sweetest 
that the world knows. 

We first drove to the village of Cumnor, about six 
miles from Oxford, and alighted at the entrance of the 
church. Here, while waiting for the keys, we looked 
at an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of loose 
gray stones which are said to have once formed a por- 
tion of Cumnor Hall, celebrated in Mickle's ballad 
and Scott's romance. The hall must have been in very 
close vicinity to the church, — not more than twenty 
yards off; and I waded through the long, dewy grass 



NEAR OXFORD. 201 

of the churchyard, and tried to peep over the wall in 
hopes to discover some tangible and traceable remains 
of the edifice. But the wall was just too high to be 
overlooked, and difficult to clamber over without 
tumbling down some of the stones ; so I took the 
word of one of our party, who had been here before, 
that there is nothing interesting on the other side. 
The churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and 
seems not to have been mown for the benefit of the 
parson's cow ; it contains a good many gravestones, 
of which I remember only some upright memorials of 
slate to individuals of the name of Tabbs. 

Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church- 
door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which 
has the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy 
pillars and low arches, and other ordinary character- 
istics of an English country church. One or two pews, 
probably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, 
were better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest 
style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there 
is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, 
built against the wall, and surmounted by a carved 
canopy of the same material ; and over the tomb, and 
beneath the canopy, are two monumental brasses 
such as we oftener see inlaid into a church pavement. 
On these brasses are engraved the figures of a gentle- 
man in armor and a lady in an antique garb, each 
about a foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer ; and 
there is a long Latin inscription likewise cut into the 
enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulogies on 
the character of Anthony Forster, who, with his vir- 
tuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His 
is the knightly figure that kneels above ; and if Sir 
Walter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had 



202 OUR OLD HOME. 

an even greater than common disbelief in laudatory 
epitaphs, to venture on depicting Anthony Forster in 
such hues as blacken him in the romance. For my part, 
I read the inscription in full faith, and believe the poor 
deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged individual, 
with good grounds for bringing an action of slander 
in the courts above. 

But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its 
serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety, 
which so worries us, about our good fame, or our bad 
fame, after death ! If it were of the slightest real 
moment, our reputations would have been placed by 
Providence more in our own power, and less in other 
people's, than we now find them to be. If poor An- 
thony Forster happens to have met Sir Walter in the 
other world, I doubt whether he has ever thought it 
worth while to complain of the latter's misrepresenta- 
tions. 

We did not remain long in the church, as it contains 
nothing else of interest; and driving through the 
village, we passed a pretty large and rather antique- 
looking inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged 
Staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a 
hundred years, as Giles Gosling's time ; nor is there 
any other object to remind the visitor of the Eliza- 
bethan age, unless it be a few ancient cottages, that are 
perhaps of still earlier date. Cum nor is not nearly so 
large a village, nor a place of such mark, as one an- 
ticipates from its romantic and legendary fame ; but, 
being still inaccessible by railway, it has retained 
more of a sylvan character than we often find in 
English country towns. In this retired neighborhood 
the road is narrow and bordered with grass, and 
sometimes interrupted by gates ; the hedges grow in 



NEAR OXFORD. 203 

unpruned luxuriance ; there is not that close-shaven 
neatness and trimness that characterize the ordinary 
English landscape. The whole scene conveys the 
idea of seclusion and remoteness. We met no trav- 
ellers, whether on foot or otherwise. 

I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's peregri- 
nations ; but, after leaving Cumnor a few miles behind 
us, I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, where 
an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a boat 
across by means of a rope stretching from shore to 
shore. Our two vehicles being thus placed on the 
other side, we resumed our drive, — first glancing, 
however, at the old woman's antique cottage, with its 
stone floor, and the circular settle round the kitchen 
fireplace, which was quite in the mediaeval English 
style. 

We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we 
were received at the parsonage with a hospitality 
which we should take delight in describing, if it were 
allowable to make public acknowledgment of the 
private and personal kindnesses which we never failed 
to find ready for our needs. An American in an 
English house will soon adopt the opinion that the 
English are the very kindest people on earth, and will 
retain that idea as long, at least, as he remains on the 
inner side of the threshold. Their magnetism is of a 
kind that repels strongly while you keep beyond a 
certain limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within 
the magic line. 

It was at this place, if I remember right, that I 
heard a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he 
was the author of " The Red Letter A " ; and, after 
some consideration, (for he did not seem to recognize 
his own book, at first, under this improved title,) our 



204 0VR 0LD HOME. 

countryman responded, doubtfully, that he believed so. 
The gentleman proceded to inquire whether our friend 
had spent much time in America, — evidently thinking 
that he must have been caught young, and have had 
a tincture of English breeding, at least, if not birth, 
to speak the language so tolerably, and appear so 
much like other people. This insular narrowness is 
exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occurrence, 
and is quite as much a characteristic of men of educa- 
tion and culture as of clowns. 

Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It 
was formerly the seat of the ancient family of Har- 
court, which now has its principal abode at Nuneham 
Courtney, a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic 
of the family mansion, or castle, other portions of 
which are close at hand ; for, across the garden, rise 
two gray towers, both of them picturesquely venerable, 
and interesting for more than their antiquity. One 
of these towers, in its entire capacity, from height to 
depth, constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle, 
and is still used for domestic purposes, although it 
has not, nor ever had, a chimney; or we might rather 
say, it is itself one vast chimney, with a hearth of 
thirty feet square, and a flue and aperture of the same 
size. There are two huge fireplaces within, and the 
interior walls of the tower are blackened with the 
smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from 
them, and climb upward, seeking an exit through 
some wide air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy 
feet above. These lofty openings were capable of 
being so arranged, with reference to the wind, that the 
cooks are said to have been seldom troubled by the 
smoke ; and here, no doubt, tbey were accustomed to 
roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and ado as a 



NEAR OXFORD. 205 

modern cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the 
tower is very dim and sombre, (being nothing but 
rough stone walls, lighted only from the apertures 
above mentioned,) and has still a pungent odor of 
smoke and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and 
feasts of generations that have passed away. Methinks 
the extremest range of domestic economy Hes between 
an American cooking-stove and the ancient kitchen, 
seventy dizzy feet in height, and all one fireplace, of 
Stanton Harcourt. 

Now — the place being without a parallel in Eng- 
land, and therefore necessarily beyond the experience 
of an American — it is somewhat remarkable, that, 
while we stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted 
and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I 
had seen just this strange spectacle before. The 
height, the blackness, the dismal void, before my eyes, 
seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my 
grandmother's kitchen ; only my unaccountable mem- 
ory of the scene was lighted up with an image of 
lurid fires blazing all round the dim interior circuit of 
the tower. I had never before had so pertinacious an 
attack, as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state 
of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly remember 
some previous scene or incident, of which the one 
now passing appears to be but the echo and redupli- 
cation. Though the explanation of the mystery did 
not for some time occur to me, I may as well conclude 
the matter here. In a letter of Pope's, addressed to 
the Duke of Buckingham, there is an account of 
Stanton Harcourt, (as I now find, although the name 
is not mentioned,) where he resided while translating 
a part of the " Iliad. 11 It is one of the most admi- 
rable pieces of description in the language, — playful 



206 OUR OLD HOME. 

and picturesque, with fine touches of humorous pa- 
thos, — and conveys as perfect a picture as ever was 
drawn of a decayed English country house ; and 
among other rooms, most of which have since crumbled 
down and disappeared, he dashes off the grim aspect 
of this kitchen, — which, moreover, he peoples with 
witches, engaging Satan himself as head-cook, who 
stirs the infernal caldrons that seethe and bubble over 
the fires. This letter, and others relative to his abode 
here, were very familiar to my earlier reading, and, re- 
maining still fresh at the bottom of my memory, 
caused the weird and ghostly sensation that came 
over me on beholding the real spectacle that had 
formerly been made so vivid to my imagination. 

Our next visit was to the church, which stands close 
by, and is quite as ancient as the remnants of the 
castle. In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the 
Harcourts, are found some very interesting family 
monuments, — and among them, recumbent on a 
tombstone, the figure of an armed knight of the 
Lancastrian party, who was slain in the Wars of the 
Roses. His features, dress, and armor are painted in 
colors, still wonderfully fresh, and there still blushes 
the symbol of the Red Rose, denoting the faction for 
which he fought and died. His head rests on a 
marble or alabaster helmet ; and on the tomb lies the 
veritable helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore 
in battle, — a ponderous iron case, with the visor 
complete, and remnants of the gilding that once 
covered it. The crest is a large peacock, not of metal, 
but of wood. Very possibly, this helmet was but an 
heraldic adornment of his tomb ; and, indeed, it 
seems strange that it has not been stolen before now, 
especially in Cromwell's time, when knightly tombs 



NEAR OXFORD. 207 

were little respected, and when armor was in request. 
However, it is needless to dispute with the dead 
knight about the identity of his iron pot, and we may 
as well allow it to be the very same that so often gave 
him the headache in his lifetime. Leaning against 
the wall, at the foot of the tomb, is the shaft of a 
spear, with a wofully tattered and utterly faded banner 
appended to it, — the knightly banner beneath which 
he marshalled his followers in the field. As it was 
absolutely falling to pieces, I tore off one little bit, no 
bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into my waistcoat 
pocket ; but seeking it subsequently, it was not to be 
found. 

On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or 
three yards from this tomb, is another monument, on 
which lie, side by side, one of the same knightly race 
of Harcourts, and his lady. The tradition of the 
family is, that this knight was the standard-bearer of 
Henry of Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field ; 
and a banner, supposed to be the same that he carried, 
now droops over his effigy.. It is just such a colorless 
silk rag as the one already described. The knight 
has the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady 
wears it on her left arm, — an odd place enough for a 
garter ; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not 
be decorously visible. The complete preservation 
and good condition of these statues, even to the 
minutest adornment of the sculpture, and their very 
noses, — the most vulnerable part of a marble man, as 
of a living one, — are miraculous. Except in West- 
minster Abbey, among the chapels of the kings, I 
have seen none so well preserved. Perhaps they owe 
it to the loyalty of Oxfordshire, diffused throughout 
its neighborhood by the influence of the University. 



208 OUR OLD HOME. 

during the great Civil War and the rule of the Parlia- 
ment. It speaks well, too, for the upright and kindly 
character of this old family, that the peasantry, among 
whom they had lived for ages, did not desecrate their 
tombs, when it might have been done with impunity. 

There are other and more recent memorials of the 
Harcourts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord, 
who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like 
those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, 
clad, not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The 
title is now extinct, but the family survives in a 
younger branch, and still holds this patrimonial estate, 
though they have long since quitted it as a residence. 

We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds apper- 
taining to the mansion, and which used to be of vast 
dietary importance to the family in Catholic times, 
and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There 
are two or three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of 
which is of very respectable size, — large enough, in- 
deed, to be really a picturesque object, with its grass- 
green borders, and the trees drooping over it, and the 
towers of the castle and the church reflected within 
the weed-grown depths of its smooth mirror. A sweet 
fragrance, as it were, of ancient time and present quiet 
and seclusion was breathing all around ; the sunshine 
of to-day had a mellow charm of antiquity in its 
brightness. These ponds are said still to breed 
abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet waters : 
but I saw only some minnows, and one or two snakes, 
which were lying among the weeds on the top of the 
water, sunning and bathing themselves at once. 

I mentioned that there were two towers remaining 
of the old castle : the one containing the kitchen we 
have already visited ; the other, still more interesting, 



NEAR OXFORD. 209 

is next to be described. It is some seventy feet high, 
gray and reverend, but in excellent repair, though I 
could not perceive that anything had been done to 
renovate it. The basement story was once the family 
chapel, and is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At 
one corner of the tower is a circular turret, within 
which a narrow staircase, with worn steps of stone, 
winds round and round as it climbs upward, giving 
access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerg- 
ing on the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret- 
stair, and arriving at the third story, we entered a 
chamber, not large, though occupying the whole area 
of the tower, and lighted by a window on each side. 
It was wainscoted from floor to ceiling with dark oak, 
and had a little fireplace in one of the corners. The 
window-panes were small and set in lead. The curi- 
osity of this room is, that it was once the residence 
of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part 
of the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, 
the admirable letters to which I have referred above. 
The room once contained a record by himself, 
scratched with a diamond on one of the window- 
panes, (since removed for safekeeping to Nuneham 
Courtney, where it was shown me,) purporting that 
he had here finished the fifth book of the " Iliad " on 
such a day. 

A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other 
human being is gifted withal ; it is indestructible, and 
clings for evermore to everything that he has touched. 
I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that 
the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was 
created for him ; but here, after a century and a half, 
we are still conscious of the presence of that decrepit 
little figure of Queen Anne's time, although he was 



210 OUR OLD HOME. 

merely a casual guest in the old tower, during one or 
two summer months. However brief the time and 
slight the connection, his spirit cannot be exorcised 
so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, 
Pope, or any other person with an available claim, is 
right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive; for I 
never saw a chamber that I should like better to in- 
habit, — so comfortably small, in such a safe and inac- 
cessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from 
each window. One of them looks upon the church, 
close at hand, and down into the green churchyard, 
extending almost to the foot of the tower ; the others 
have views wide and far, over a gently undulating 
tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, 
about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring 
the occupant to the summit of the tower, — where 
Pope used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings 
and peep — poor little shrimp that he was ! — through 
the embrasures of the battlement. 

From Stanton Harcourt we drove — I forget how 
far — to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon 
the Thames, or some other stream ; for I am ashamed 
to confess my ignorance of the precise geographical 
whereabout. We were, at any rate, some miles above 
Oxford, and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the 
sources of England's mighty river. It was little more 
than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars, to 
pass, — shallow, too, and bordered with bulrushes and 
water-weeds, which, in some places, quite overgrew 
the surface of the river from bank to bank. The 
shores were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the 
boatman told us, are overflowed by the rise of the 
stream. The water looked clean and pure, but not 
particularly transparent, though enough so to show us 



NEAR OXFORD. 211 

that the bottom is very much weed-grown ; and I was 
told that the weed is an American production, brought 
to England with importations of timber, and now 
ihreatening to choke up the Thames and other 
English rivers. I wonder it does not try its obstruc- 
tive powers upon the Merrimack, the Connecticut, or 
the Hudson, — not to speak of the St. Lawrence or 
the Mississippi ! 

It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, 
comfortably accommodating our party ; the day con- 
tinued sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boat- 
man, well trained to his business, managed the oars 
skilfully and vigorously ; and we went down the 
stream quite as swiftly as it was desirable to go, the 
scene being so pleasant, and the passing hours so 
thoroughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider 
and deeper, perhaps, as we glided on, but was still an 
inconsiderable stream : for it had a good deal more 
than a hundred miles to meander through before it 
should bear fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces 
and towers and Parliament houses and dingy and sor- 
did piles of various structure, as it rolled to and fro 
with the tide, dividing London asunder. Not, in 
truth, that I ever saw any edifice whatever reflected 
in its turbid breast, when the sylvan stream, as 
we beheld it now, is swollen into the Thames at 
London. 

Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the 
boatman and some other persons drew our skiff 
round some rapids, which we could not otherwise 
have passed ; another time, the boat went through a 
lock. We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine 
the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair 
Rosamond secluded herself, after being separated from 



212 OUR OLD HOME. 



and a shattered tower at one of the angles; the 
whole much ivy-grown, — brimming over, indeed, 
with clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of the 
walls. The nunnery is now, I believe, held in lease 
by the city of Oxford, which has converted its pre- 
cincts into a barnyard. The gate was under lock and 
key, so that we could merely look at the outside, and 
soon resumed our places in the boat. 

At three o'clock, or thereabouts, (or sooner or 
later, — for I took little heed of time, and only wished 
that these delightful wanderings might last forever,) 
we reached Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took 
possession of a spacious barge, with a house in it, 
and a comfortable dining-room or drawing-room 
within the house, and a level roof, on which we could 
sit at ease, or dance, if so inclined. These barges 
are common at Oxford, — some very splendid ones 
being owned by the students of the different colleges, 
or by clubs. They are drawn by horses, like canal- 
boats ; and a horse being attached to our own barge, 
he trotted off at a reasonable pace, and we slipped 
through the water behind him, with a gentle and 
pleasant motion, which, save for the constant vicissi- 
tude of cultivated scenery, was like no motion at all. 
It was life without the trouble of living ; nothing was 
ever more quietly agreeable. In this happy state of 
mind and body we gazed at Christ-Church meadows, 
as we passed, and at the receding spires and towers 
of Oxford, and on a good deal of pleasant variety 
along the banks : young men rowing or fishing ; 
troops of naked boys bathing, as if this were Arcadia, 
in the simplicity of the Golden Age; country houses, 
cottages, water-side inns, all with something fresh 



NEAR OXFORD. 213 

about them, as not being sprinkled with the dust of 
the highway. We were a large party now ; for a 
number of additional guests had joined us at Folly 
Bridge, and we comprised poets, novelists, scholars, 
sculptors, painters, architects, men and women of 
renown, dear friends, genial, outspoken, open-hearted 
Englishmen, — all voyaging onward together, like the 
wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember not a 
single annoyance, except, indeed, that a swarm of 
wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of 
one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent 
of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into his 
hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble 
the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in 
mind that we were mortal. 

Meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of 
our barge, and spread with cold ham, cold fowl, cold 
pigeon-pie, cold beef, and other substantial cheer, 
such as the English love, and Yankees too, — 
besides tarts, and cakes, and pears, and plums, — not 
forgetting, of course, a goodly provision of port, 
sherry, and champagne, and bitter ale, which is like 
mother's milk to an Englishman, and soon grows 
equally acceptable to his American cousin. By the 
time these matters had been properly attended to, we 
had arrived at that part of the Thames which passes 
by Nuneham Courtney, a fine estate belonging to the 
Harcourts, and the present residence of the family. 
Here we landed, and, climbing a steep slope from 
the riverside, paused a moment or two to look at an 
architectural object, called the Carfax, the purport of 
which I do not well understand. Thence we pro- 
ceeded onward, through the loveliest park and wood- 
land scenery I ever saw, and under as beautiful a 



214 0UR 0LD HOME. 

declining sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth, to 
the stately mansion-house. 

As we here cross a private threshold, it is not 
allowable to pursue my feeble narrative of this de- 
lightful day with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, 
perhaps, I may as well bring it to a close. I may 
mention, however, that I saw the library, a fine, large 
apartment, hung round with portraits of eminent liter- 
ary men, principally of the last century, most of whom 
were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house it- 
self is about eighty years old, and is built in the classic 
style, as if the family had been anxious to diverge as 
far as possible from the Gothic picturesqueness of 
their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The grounds 
were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed 
to me even more beautiful than those of Blenheim. 
Mason the poet, a friend of the house, gave the 
design of a portion of the garden. Of the whole 
place I will not be niggardly of my rude Transat- 
lantic praise, but be bold to say that it appeared to 
me as perfect as anything earthly can be, — utterly 
and entirely finished, as if the years and generations 
had done all that the hearts and minds of the succes- 
sive owners could contrive for a spot they dearly love. 
Such homes as Nuneham Courtney are among the 
splendid results of long hereditary possession ; and 
we Republicans, whose households melt away like 
new-fallen snow in a spring morning, must content 
ourselves with our many counterbalancing advantages, 
— for this one, so apparently desirable to the far-pro- 
jecting selfishness of our nature, we are certain never 
' d attain. 

It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nune- 
ham Courtney is one of the great show-places of 



NEAR OXFORD. 21 5 

England. It is merely a fair specimen of the better 
class of country-seats, and has a hundred rivals, and 
many superiors, in the features of beauty, and expan- 
sive, manifold, redundant comfort, which most im- 
pressed me. A moderate man might be content with 
such a home, — that is all. 

And now I take leave of Oxford without even an 
attempt to describe it, — there being no literary fac- 
ulty, attainable or conceivable by me, which can avail 
to put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. 
It must remain its own sole expression ; and those 
whose sad fortune it may be never to behold it have 
no better resource than to dream about gray, weather- 
stained, ivy -grown edifices, wrought with quaint 
Gothic ornament, and standing around grassy quad- 
rangles, where cloistered walks have echoed to the 
quiet footsteps of twenty generations, — lawns and 
gardens of luxurious repose, shadowed with canopies 
of foliage, and lit up with sunny glimpses through 
archways of great boughs, — spires, towers, and tur- 
rets, each with its history and legend, — dimly mag- 
nificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty 
and brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmos- 
phere of richest gloom, — vast college-halls, high- 
windowed, oaken-panelled, and hung round with 
portraits of the men, in every age, whom the Univer- 
sity has nurtured to be illustrious, — long vistas of 
alcoved libraries, where the wisdom and learned folly 
of all time is shelved, — kitchens, (we throw in this 
feature by way of ballast, and because it would not be 
English Oxford without its beef and beer,) with huge 
fireplaces, capable of roasting a hundred joints at 
once, — and cavernous cellars, where rows of piled-up 
hogsheads seethe and fume with that mighty malt 



2l6 OUR OLD HOME. 

liquor which is the true milk of Alma Mater : make 
all these things vivid in your dream, and you will 
never know nor believe how inadequate is the result 
to represent even the merest outside of Oxford. 

We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this 
article without making our grateful acknowledgments, 
by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness 
was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and 
enjoyments. Delightful as will always be our recollec- 
tion of Oxford and its neighborhood, we partly sus- 
pect that it owes much of its happy coloring to the 
genial medium through which the objects were pre- 
sented to us, — to the kindly magic of a hospitality 
unsurpassed, within our experience, in the quality of 
making the guest contented with his host, with him- 
self, and everything about him. He has inseparably 
mingled his image with our remembrance of the Spires 
of Oxford. 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 2\J 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 



We left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within 
the half-hour were at Gretna Green. Thence we 
rushed onward into Scotland through a flat and 
dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert 
and bog, where probably the moss-troopers were ac- 
customed to take refuge after their raids into England. 
Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view, 
occasionally attaining a height which might almost be 
called mountainous. In about two hours we reached 
Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. 

Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we 
found it an awfully hot day, not a whit less so than 
the day before ; but we sturdily adventured through 
the burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our 
way to the residence of Burns. The street leading 
from the station is called Shakspeare Street ; and at its 
farther extremity we read " Burns Street 1 ' on a corner 
house, — the avenue thus designated having been 
formerly known as" Mill-Hole Brae." It is a vile lane, 
paved with small, hard stones from side to side, and 
bordered by cottages or mean houses of whitewashed 
stone, joining one to another along the whole length 
of the street. With not a tree, of course, or a blade 
of grass between the paving-stones, the narrow lane 
was as hot as Tophet, and reeked with a genuine 
Scotch odor, being infested with unwashed children. 



2l8 OUR OLD HOME. 

and altogether in a state of chronic tilth ; although 
some women seemed to be hopelessly scrubbing the 
thresholds of their wretched dwellings. I never saw 
an outskirt of a town less fit for a poet's residence, or 
in which it would be more miserable for any man of 
cleanly predilections to spend his days. 

We asked for Burns's dwelling ; and a woman 
pointed across the street to a two-story house, built of 
stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors, but per- 
haps of a little more respectable aspect than most of 
them, though I hesitate in saying so. It was not a 
separate structure, but under the same continuous 
roof with the next. There was an inscription on the 
door, bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating 
that the house was now occupied by a ragged or in- 
dustrial school. On knocking, we were instantly ad- 
mitted by a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when 
we told our errand, and showed us into a low and 
very plain parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen feet 
square. A young woman, who seemed to be a 
teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us that 
this had been Burns's usual sitting-room, and that he 
had written many of his songs here. 

She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little 
bedchamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, 
there is a very small room, or windowed closet, which 
Burns used as a study ; and the bedchamber itself was 
the one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in 
which he died at last. Altogether, it is an exceed- 
ingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and rural poet to 
live or die in, — even more unsatisfactory than Shak- 
speare's house, which has a certain homely pictu- 
resqueness that contrasts favorably with the suburban 
sordidness of the abode before us. The narrow lane, 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 219 

the paving-stones, and the contiguity of wretched 
hovels are depressing to remember ; and the steam of 
them (such is our human weakness) might almost 
make the poet's memory less fragrant. 

As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. 
After leaving the house, we found our way into the 
principal street of the town, which, it may be fair to 
say, is of very different aspect from the wretched out- 
skirt above described. Entering a hotel, (in which, 
as a Dumfries guide-book assured us, Prince Charles 
Edward had once spent a night,) we rested and 
refreshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the 
mausoleum of Burns. 

Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man 
digging a grave, and, scrambling out of the hole, he 
let us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of 
monuments. Their general shape and construction 
are peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet 
of marble or other stone, within a framework of the 
same material, somewhat resembling the frame of a 
looking-glass ; and, all over the churchyard, these 
sepulchral memorials rise to the height of ten, fifteen, 
or twenty feet, forming quite an imposing collection 
of monuments, but inscribed with names of small 
general significance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain 
the rank of those who slept below ; for in Scotland 
it is the custom to put the occupation of the buried 
personage (as " Skinner, 11 " Shoemaker, 11 " Flesher ") 
on his tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives are 
buried under their maiden names, instead of those of 
their husbands ; thus giving a disagreeable impres- 
sion that the married pair have bidden each other an 
eternal farewell on the edge of the grave. 

There was a footpath through this crowded church 



220 OUR OLD HOME. 

yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave 
of Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it 
appeared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was 
privileged to show it to strangers. The monument is 
a sort of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, 
covering a space of about twenty feet square. It was 
formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch 
atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large 
squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of 
one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked 
the door, and admitted us into the interior. Inlaid 
into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of 
Burns, — the very same that was laid over his grave 
by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. 
Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble 
statue of Burns at the plough, with the Genius of 
Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet. 
Methought it was not a very successful piece of work ; 
for the plough was better sculptured than the man, 
and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more 
effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us 
that an old man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies 
this statue to be very like the original. 

The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of 
some of their children, lie in the vault over which we 
stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in her own 
plain way, and very agreeable to talk withal) said that 
the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on occa- 
sion of the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The 
poefs bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once 
so brimming over with powerful thought and bright 
and tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for 
several days by a Dumfries doctor. It has since 
been deposited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 221 

the vault. We learned that there is a surviving 
daughter of Burns's eldest son, and daughters like- 
wise of the two younger sons, — and, besides these, 
an illegitimate posterity by the eldest son, who 
appears to have been of disreputable life in his 
younger days. He inherited his father's failings, with 
some faint shadow, I have also understood, of the 
great qualities which have made the world tender of 
his father's vices and weaknesses. 

We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but 
found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the 
reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over 
his grave had very much the same tendency and effect 
as the home-scene of his life, which we had been 
visiting just previously. Beholding his poor, mean 
dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his out- 
ward life and earthly manifestations from these, one 
does not so much wonder that the people of that day 
should have failed to recognize all that was admirable 
and immortal in a disreputable drunken, shabbily 
clothed, and shabbily housed man, consorting with 
associates of damaged character, and, as his only 
ostensible occupation, gauging the whiskey, which he 
too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs 
must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the 
world a little justice too. It is far easier to know and 
honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the 
spotlessness of marble than when the actual man 
comes staggering before you, besmeared with the 
sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly 
wonder that his recognition dawned so brightly while 
he was still living. There must have been some- 
thing very grand in his immediate presence, some 
strangely impressive characteristic in his natural 



222 OUR OLD HOME. 

behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demi- 
god so soon. 

As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a 
spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dum- 
fries were buried during the cholera year ; and also 
some curious old monuments, with raised letters, the 
inscriptions on which were not sufficiently legible to 
induce us to puzzle them out ; but, I believe, they 
mark the resting-places of old Covenanters, some of 
whom were killed by Claverhouse and his fellow- 
ruffians. 

St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was 
built about a hundred years ago, on an old Catholic 
foundation. Our guide admitted us into it, and showed 
us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble figure of 
a child asleep, with a drapery over the lower part, 
from beneath which appeared its two baby feet. It 
was truly a sweet little statue ; and the woman told 
us that it represented a child of the sculptor, and that 
the baby (here still in its marble infancy) had died 
more than twenty-six years ago. " Many ladies, 1 ' she 
said, " especially such as had ever lost a child, had 
shed tears over it." It was very pleasant to think of 
the sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art 
to re-create his tender child in stone, and to make the 
representation as soft and sweet as the original ; but 
the conclusion of the story has something that jars 
with our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from 
London had seen the statue, and was so much 
delighted with it that he bought it of the father-artist, 
after it had lain above a quarter of a century in the 
church-porch. So this was not the real, tender image 
that came out of the father's heart ; he had sold 
that truest one for a hundred guineas, and sculptored 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 223 

this mere copy to replace it. The first figure was 
entirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. 
The copy, as I have said above, has a drapery over 
the lower limbs. But, after all, if we come to the 
truth of the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fitly 
reposited in the drawing-room of a connoisseur as in 
a cold and dreary church-porch. 

We went into the church, and found it very plain 
and naked, without altar-decorations, and having its 
floor quite covered with unsightly wooden pews. 
The woman led us to a pew cornering on one of the 
side-aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns^ 
family-pew, showed us his seat, which is in the corner 
by the aisle. It is so situated, that a sturdy pillar hid 
him from the pulpit, and from the minister's eye ; " for 
Robin was no great friends with the ministers, 11 said 
she. This touch — his seat behind the pillar, and 
Burns himself nodding in sermon-time, or keenly 
observant of profane things — brought him before us 
to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right 
before Burns, and not mote than two feet off, sat the 
young lady on whom the poet saw that unmentionable 
parasite which he has immortalized in song. We were 
ungenerous enough to ask the lady^ name, but the 
good woman could not tell it. This was the last thing 
which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record ; and it 
ought to be noted that our guide refused some money 
which my companion offered her, because I had al- 
ready paid her what she deemed sufficient. 

At the railway station we spent more than a weary 
hour, waiting for the train, which at last came up, and 
took us to Mauchline. We got into an omnibus, the 
only conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile 
to the village, where we established ourselves at the 



224 0UR 0LD HOME. 

Loudoun Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which 
we have found in Great Britain. The town of Mauch- 
line, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any 
other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cottages, 
mostly white-washed, and with thatched roofs. It 
has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate village, 
and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to 
make, or to render uglier through a succession of un- 
tidy generations. The fashion of paving the village 
street, and patching one shabby house on the gable- 
end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleas- 
antness ; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a 
more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used 
to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this of 
Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the 
street, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its 
architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In 
this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene 
of one of Burns's most characteristic productions, 
"The Holy Fair. 11 

Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village 
street, stands Posie Nansie^ inn, where the " Jolly 
Beggars " congregated. The latter is a two-story, 
red-stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no 
means venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has 
small, old-fashioned windows, and may well have stood 
for centuries, — though, seventy or eighty years ago, 
when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it 
might have been something better than a beggars 1 
alehouse. The whole town of Mauchline looks rusty 
and time-worn, — even the newer houses, of which 
there are several, being shadowed and darkened by 
the general aspect of the place. When we arrived, all 
the wretched little dwellings seemed to have belched 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 225 

forth their inhabitants into the warm summer even- 
ing ; everybody was chatting with everybody, on the 
most familiar terms ; the bare-legged children gam- 
bolled or quarrelled uproariously, and came freely, 
moreover, and looked into the window of our parlor. 
When we ventured out, we were followed by the gaze 
of the old town : people standing in their doorways, 
old women popping their heads from the chamber- 
windows, and stalwart men — idle on Saturday at 
e'en, after their week's hard labor — clustering at the 
street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending 
selves. .Except in some remote little town of Italy, 
(where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible 
stimulus of beggary,) I have never been honored with 
nearly such an amount of public notice. 

The next forenoon my companion put me to shame 
by attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do 
the like ; and, it being Sacrament Sunday, and my 
poor friend being wedged into the farther end of a 
closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the 
preaching of four several sermons, and came back 
perfectly exhausted and desperate. He was some- 
what consoled, however, on finding that he had wit- 
nessed a spectacle of Scotch manners identical with 
that of Burns's " Holy Fair," on the very spot where 
the poet located that immortal description. By way 
of further conformance to the customs of the country, 
we ordered a sheep's head and the broth, and did 
penance accordingly ; and at five o'clock we took a 
fly, and set out for Burns's farm of Moss Giel. 

Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, 
and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with a 
view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just 
before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to 



226 OUR OLD HOME. 

point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which 
he said was Burns's " Lousie Thorn ; " and I devoutly 
plucked a branch, although I have really forgotten 
where or how this illustrious shrub has been cele- 
brated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and 
almost immediately came to the farm-house of Moss 
Giel, standing some fifty yards removed from the 
high-road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and con- 
siderably overshadowed by trees. The house is a 
whitewashed stone cottage, like thousands of others 
in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on 
which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, 
though alien growth. There is a door and one win- 
dow in front, besides another little window that peeps 
out among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and 
extending back at right angles from it, so as to enclose 
the farmyard, are two other buildings of the same 
size, shape, and general appearance as the house : any 
one of the three looks just as fit for a human habita- 
tion as the two others, and all three look still more 
suitable for donkey-stables and pigsties. As we drove 
into the farm-yard, bounded on three sides by these 
three hovels, a large dog began to bark at us ; and 
some women and children made their appearance, but 
seemed to demur about admitting us, because the 
master and mistress were very religious people, and had 
not yet come back from the Sacrament at Mauchline. 
However, it would not do to be turned back from the 
very threshold of Robert Burns ; and as the women 
seemed to be merely straggling visitors, and nobody, 
at all events, had a right to send us away, we went into 
the back-door, and, turning to the right, entered a 
kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely 
neatness, and in it there were three or four children, 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 227 

one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a 
baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of 
the people of the house, and gave us what leave she 
could to look about us. Thence we stepped across the 
narrow mid-passage of the cottage into the only other 
apartment below-stairs, a sitting-room, where we found 
a young man eating bread and cheese. He informed 
us that he did not live there, and had only called in to 
refresh himself on his way home from church. This 
room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor one, and, 
besides being all that the cottage had to show for a 
parlor, it was a "sleeping-apartment, having two beds, 
which might be curtained off, on occasion. The young 
man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go 
upstairs. Up we crept, accordingly ; and a few steps 
brought us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen, 
where we found the wretchedest little sleeping-chamber 
in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, and 
two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most prob- 
ably, was Burns's chamber ; or, perhaps, it may have 
been that of his mother's servant-maid ; and, in either 
case, this rude floor, at one time or another, must have 
creaked beneath the poet's midnight tread. On the 
opposite side of the passage was the door of another 
attic chamber, opening which, I saw a considerable 
number of cheeses on the floor. 

The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, 
and also a dunghill odor ; and it is not easy to under- 
stand how the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be 
any more agreeable or salubrious morally than it ap- 
peared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could 
keep a holy awe about her while stowed higgledy- 
piggledy with coarse-natured rustics into this narrow- 
ness and filth. Such a habitation is calculated to 



228 OUR OLD HOME. 

make beasts of men and women ; and it indicates a 
degree of barbarism which I did not imagine to exist 
in Scotland, that a tiller of broad fields, like the 
farmer of Mauchline, should have his abode in a 
pigsty. It is sad to think of anybody — not to say a 
poet, but any human being — sleeping, eating, think- 
ing, praying, and spending all his home-life in this 
miserable hovel ; but, methinks, I never in the least 
knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns's genius, 
nor his heroic merit for being no worse man, until I 
thus learned the squalid hindrances amid which he 
developed himself. Space, a free atmosphere, and 
cleanliness have a vast deal to do with the possibilities 
of human virtue. 

The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as 
being damp and unwholesome ; but I do not see why, 
outside of the cottage walls, it should possess so evil 
a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge, enjoy- 
ing, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy 
site, and sloping far downward before any marshy soil 
is reached. The high hedge, and the trees that stand 
beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect enough 
to one who does not know the grimy secrets of the 
interior ; and the summer afternoon was now so bright 
that I shall remember the scene with a great deal of 
sunshine over it. 

Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which 
the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up 
the mouse's nest. It is the inclosure nearest to the 
cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather 
remarkably unfertile one. A little farther on, the 
ground was whitened with an immense number of 
daisies, — daisies, daisies everywhere ; and in answer 
to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 229 

where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If 
so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies 
by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal 
one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these 
" wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers,' 1 which will be 
precious to many friends in our own country as com- 
ing from Burns's farm, and being of the same race and 
lineage as that daisy which he turned into an ama- 
ranthine flower while seeming to destroy it. 

From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of 
pleasant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by 
their connection with Burns. We skirted, too, along 
a portion of the estate of Auchinleck, which still be- 
longs to the Boswell family, — the present possessor 
being Sir James Boswell, 1 a grandson of Johnson's 
friend, and son of the Sir Alexander who was killed 
in a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as a kind, 
free-hearted man, but addicted to horse-races and 
similar pastimes, and a little too familiar with the 
wine-cup ; so that poor Bozzy's booziness would ap- 
pear to have become hereditary in his ancient line. 
There is no male heir to the estate of Auchinleck. 
The portion of the lands which we saw is covered 
with wood and much undermined with rabbit-warrens ; 
nor, though the territory extends over a large number 
of acres, is the income very considerable. 

By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw 
Miss Alexander, the Lass of Ballochmyle. It was on 
a bridge, which (or, more probably, a bridge that has 
succeeded to the old one, and is made of iron) crosses 
from bank to bank, high in air, over a deep gorge of 
the road ; so that the young lady may have appeared 

1 Sir James Boswell is now dead. 



230 OUR OLD HOME. 

to Burns like a creature between earth and sky, and 
compounded chiefly of celestial elements. But, in 
honest truth, the great charm of a woman, in Burns's 
eyes, was always her womanhood, and not the angelic 
mixture which other poets find in her. 

Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass 
of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on 
the banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tra- 
dition that Burns accosted her. The song implies no 
such interview. Lovers, of whatever condition, high 
or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to 
breathe their vows : the river flowing over its pebbly 
bed, sometimes gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes 
hidden deep in verdure, and here and there eddying 
at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs. This beauti- 
ful estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the family of 
Alexanders, to whom Burns's song has given renown 
on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever 
attained it. How slight the tenure seems ! A young 
lady happened to walk out, one summer afternoon, 
and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who 
celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, rude, 
— at least, not refined, though rather ambitious, — and 
somewhat ploughman-like verses. Burns has written 
hundreds of better things ; but henceforth, for centu- 
ries, that maiden has free admittance into the dream- 
land of Beautiful Women, and she and all her race 
are famous ! I should like to know the present 
bead of the family, and ascertain what value, if 
any, the members of it put upon the celebrity thus 
won. 

We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as 
" the clean village of Scotland." Certainly, as regards 
the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 23 1 

Mauchline, whither we now returned without seeing 
anything else worth writing about. 

There was a rain-storm during the night, and, in 
the morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauch- 
line was glistening with wet, while frequent showers 
came spattering down. The intense heat of many 
days past was exchanged for a chilly atmosphere, 
much more suitable to a stranger's idea of what Scotch 
temperature ought to be. We found, after breakfast, 
that the first train northward had already gone by, 
and that we must wait till nearly two o'clock for the 
next. I merely ventured out once, during the fore- 
noon, and took a brief walk through the village, in 
which I have left little to describe. Its chief business 
appears to be the manufacture of snuff-boxes. There 
are perhaps five or six shops, or more, including those 
licensed to sell only tea and tobacco; the best of them 
have the characteristics of village stores in the United 
States, dealing in a small way with an extensive 
variety of articles. I peeped into the open gateway 
of the churchyard, and saw that the ground was 
absolutely stuffed with dead people, and the surface 
crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and 
horizontal. All Burns's old Mauchline acquaintance 
are doubtless there, and the Armours among them, 
except Bonny Jean, who sleeps by her poet's side. 
The family of Armour is now extinct in Mauchline. 

Arriving at the railway station, we found a tall, 
elderly, comely gentleman walking to and fro and 
waiting for the train. He proved to be a Mr. Alex- 
ander, — it may fairly be presumed the Alexander of 
Ballochmyle, a blood relation of the lovely lass. 
Wonderful efficacy of a poet's verse, that could shed a 
glory from Long Ago on this old gentleman's white 



232 OUR OLD HOME. 

hair ! These Alexanders, by the by, are not an old 
family on the Ballochmyle estate ; the father of the 
lass having made a fortune in trade, and established 
himself as the first landed proprietor of his name 
in these parts. The original family was named 
Whitefoord. 

Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable ; 
and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish 
off the scenery, and causes a woful diminution in the 
beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. 
Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a 
southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst 
of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. 
In the intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, 
which appeared to have many modern or modern- 
fronted edifices ; although there are likewise tall, gray, 
gabled, and quaint-looking houses in the by-streets, 
here and there, betokening an ancient place. The 
town lies on both sides of the Ayr, which is here 
broad and stately, and bordered with dwellings that 
look from their windows directly down into the pass- 
ing tide. 

I crossed the river by a modern and handsome 
stone bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, 
by a venerable structure of four gray arches, which 
must have bestridden the stream ever since the early 
days of Scottish history. These are the "Two 
Briggs of Ayr," whose midnight conversation was over- 
heard by Burns, while other auditors were aware only 
of the rush and rumble of the wintry stream among the 
arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and 
paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red 
freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean 
old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 233 

between. Nothing else impressed me hereabouts, 
unless I mention, that, during the rain, the women 
and girls went about the streets of Ayr barefooted to 
save their shoes. 

The next morning wore a lowering aspect, as if it 
felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days 
of storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, 
of fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started 
at a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On 
our way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at 
a roadside cottage, on which was an inscription to the 
effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. 
It is now a public-house ; and, of course, we alighted 
and entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at 
present see it, is a neat apartment, with the modern 
improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much over- 
scribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden 
door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the 
other wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with 
initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, 
having received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, 
form really curious and interesting articles of furni- 
ture. I have seldom (though I do not personally 
adopt this mode of illustrating my humble name) felt 
inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people 
thus to record themselves at the shrines of poets and 
heroes. 

On a panel, let into the wall in a corner of the room, 
is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture 
by Nasmyth . The floor of this apartment is of boards, 
which are probably a recent substitute for the ordinary 
flag-stones of a peasant's cottage. There is but one 
other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of 



234 0UR 0LD HOME. 

went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than 
those of Shakspeare's house, — though, perhaps, not 
so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over 
which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have 
been trampling. A new window has been opened 
through the wall, towards the road; but on the oppo- 
site side is the little original window, of only four 
small panes, through which came the first daylight 
that shone upon the Scottish poet. At the side of 
the room, opposite the fireplace, is a recess, contain- 
ing a bed, which can be hidden by curtains. In that 
humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence 
was pleased to deposit the germ of the richest human 
life which mankind then had within its circumference. 
These two rooms, as I have said, make up the 
whole sum and substance of Burns's birthplace : for 
there were no chambers, nor even attics ; and the 
thatched roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and 
sitting-room, the height of which was that of the 
whole house. The cottage, however, is attached to 
another edifice of the same size and description, as 
these little habitations often are ; and, moreover, a 
splendid addition has been made to it, since the poet's 
renown began to draw visitors to the wayside ale- 
house. The old woman of the house led us through 
an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast dimen- 
sions, to be sure, but marvellously large and splendid 
as compared with what might be anticipated from the 
outward aspect of the cottage. It contained a bust 
of Burns, and was hung round with pictures and en- 
gravings, principally illustrative of his life and poems. 
In this part of the house, too, there is a parlor, 
fragrant with tobacco-smoke ; and, no doubt, many a 
noggin of whiskey is here quaffed to the memory of 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235 

the bard, who professed to draw so much inspiration 
from that potent liquor. 

We bought some of the engravings of Kirk Allo- 
way, the Bridge of Doon, and the monument, and 
gave the old woman a fee besides, and took our leave. 
A very short drive farther brought us within sight of 
the monument, and to the hotel, situated close by the 
entrance of the ornamental grounds within which the 
former is enclosed. We rang the bell at the gate of 
the enclosure, but were forced to wait a considerable 
time ; because the old man, the regular superintendent 
of the spot, had gone to assist at the laying of the 
corner-stone of a new kirk. He appeared anon, and 
admitted us, but immediately hurried away to be 
present at the concluding ceremonies, leaving us 
locked up with Burns. 

The enclosure around the monument is beautifully 
laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly 
provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended 
with loving care. The monument stands on an ele- 
vated site, and consists of a massive basement-story, 
three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant 
Grecian temple, — a mere dome, supported on 
Corinthian pillars, and open to all the winds. The 
edifice is beautiful in itself; though I know not what 
peculiar appropriateness it may have, as the memorial 
of a Scottish rural poet. 

The door of the basement story stood open ; and, 
entering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking 
keener, more refined, but not so warm and whole- 
souled as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness 
cannot be good. In the centre of the room stood a 
glass case, in which were reposited the two volumes 
of the little Pocket Bible that Burns gave to High- 



236 OUR OLD HOME. 

land Mary, when they pledged their troth to one 
another. It is poorly printed, on coarse paper. A 
verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and 
awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each 
volume, in the poet's own hand ; and fastened to one 
of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's golden 
hair. This Bible had been carried to America by 
one of her relatives, but was sent back to be fitly 
treasured here. 

There is a staircase within the monument, by 
which we ascended to the top, and had a view of both 
Briggs of Doon ; the scene of Tarn O'Shanter's mis- 
adventure being close at hand. Descending, we 
wandered through the enclosed garden, and came to 
a little building in a corner, on entering which, we 
found the two statues of Tarn and Sutor Wat, — 
ponderous stone-work enough, yet permeated in a 
remarkable degree with living warmth and jovial 
hilarity. From this part of the garden, too, we again 
beheld the old Brigg of Doon, over which Tarn 
galloped in such imminent and awful peril. It is a 
beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, 
graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over and 
around with foliage. 

When we had waited a good while, the old gar- 
dener came, telling us that he had heard an excellent 
prayer at laying the corner-stone of the new kirk. He 
now gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us 
out from his pleasant garden. We immediately hast- 
ened to Kirk Alloway, which is within two or three 
minutes 1 walk of the monument. A few steps ascend 
from the roadside, through a gate, into the old grave- 
yard, in the midst of which stands the kirk. The 
edifice is wholly roofless, but the side-walls and gable- 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 237 

ends are quite entire, though portions of them are 
evidently modern restorations. Never was there a 
plainer little church, or one with smaller architectural 
pretensions ; no New England meeting-house has 
more simplicity in its very self, though poetry and fun 
have clambered and clustered so wildly over Kirk 
Alloway that it is difficult to see it as it actually exists. 
By the by, I do not understand why Satan and an 
assembly of witches should hold their revels within 
a consecrated precinct ; but the weird scene has so 
established itself in the world's imaginative faith that 
it must be accepted as an authentic incident, in spite 
of rule and reason to the contrary. Possibly, some 
carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and hid- 
den infidelity, had dispelled the consecration of the 
holy edifice by his pretence of prayer, and thus 
made it the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcerers 
and devils. 

The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to 
quite as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the 
witches used it as a dancing-hall ; for it is divided in 
the midst by a wall of stone masonry, and each com- 
partment has been converted into a family burial-place. 
The name on one of the monuments is Crawfurd ; 
the other bore no inscription. It is impossible not to 
feel that these good people, whoever they may be, had 
no business to thrust their prosaic bones into a spot 
that belongs to the world, and where their presence 
jars with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the 
pilgrim brings thither. They shut us out from our 
own precincts, too, — from that inalienable possession 
which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by 
taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to the 
domain of imagination. And here these wretched 



238 OUR OLD HOME. 

squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after 
barring each of the two doorways of the kirk with an 
iron grate ! May their rest be troubled, till they rise 
and let us in ! 

Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering 
how large a space it fills in our imagination before we 
see it. I paced its length, outside of the wall, and 
found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more 
than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have been 
but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly re- 
member, are now blocked up with mason-work of stone. 
One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in the eastern 
gable, might have been seen by Tarn CTShanter, blaz- 
ing with devilish light, as he approached along the 
road from Ayr ; and there is a small and square one, 
on the side nearest the road, into which he might 
have peered, as he sat on horseback. Indeed, I 
could easily have looked through it, standing on the 
ground, had not the opening been walled up. There 
is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of one of the 
gables, with the small bell still hanging in it. And 
this is all that I remember of Kirk Alloway, except 
that the stones of its material are gray and irregular. 

The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and 
crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerv- 
ing much from a straight line. To reach the old 
bridge, it appears to have made a bend, shortly after 
passing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply 
towards the river. The new bridge is within a min- 
ute's walk of the monument ; and we went thither, 
and leaned over its parapet to admire the beautiful 
Doon, flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and 
wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier scene ; al- 
though this might have been even lovelier, if a kindly 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 239 

sun had shone upon it. The ivy-grown, ancient 
bridge, with its high arch, through which we had a 
picture of the river and the green banks beyond, was 
absolutely the most picturesque object, in a quiet and 
gentle way, that ever blessed my eyes. Bonny Doon, 
with its wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into 
the water ! The memory of them, at this moment, 
affects me like the song of birds, and Burns crooning 
some verses, simple and wild, in accordance with 
their native melody. 

It was impossible to depart without crossing the 
very bridge of Tarn's adventure ; so we went thither, 
over a now disused portion of the road, and, standing 
on the centre of the arch, gathered some ivy-leaves 
from that sacred spot. This done, we returned as 
speedily as might be to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, 
we soon beheld Ailsa Craig rising like a pyramid out 
of the sea. Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond 
hove in sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by 
a shoulder on each side. But a man is better than a 
mountain ; and we had been holding intercourse, if 
not with the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost 
of one of Earth's memorable sons, amid the scenes 
where he lived and sung. We shall appreciate him 
better as a poet, hereafter ; for there is no writer whose 
life, as a man, has so much to do with his fame, and 
throws such a necessary light upon whatever he has 
produced. Henceforth, there will be a personal 
warmth for us in everything that he wrote ; and, like 
his countrymen, we shall know him in a kind of per- 
sonal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and 
felt the thrill of his actual voice. 



24O OUR OLD HOME. 



A LONDON SUBURB. 

One of our English summers looks, in the retro- 
spect, as if it had been patched with more frequent 
sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords ; 
but I believe that it may be only a moral effect, — a 
" light that never was on sea nor land," — caused by 
our having found a particularly delightful abode in the 
neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, how- 
ever, I was compelled to solve the problem of living 
in two places at once, — an impossibility which I so 
far accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, 
out of men's sight and knowledge on one side of 
England, and take my place in a circle of familiar 
faces on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have 
been there all along. It was the easier to get accus- 
tomed to our new residence, because it was not only 
rich in all the material properties of a home, but had 
also the home-like atmosphere, the household element, 
which is of too intangible a character to be let even 
with the most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. 
A friend had given us his suburban residence, with all 
its conveniences, elegances, and snuggeries, — its 
drawing-rooms and library, still warm and bright with 
the recollection of the genial presences that we had 
known there, — its closets, chambers, kitchen, and 
even its wine-cellar, if we could have availed ourselves 
of so dear and delicate a trust, — its lawn and cosey 
garden-nooks, and whatever else makes up the multi- 
tudinous idea of an English home, — he had trans- 



A LONDON SUBURB. 24 1 

ferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that 
we might rest and take our ease during his summer's 
absence on the Continent. We had long been dwell- 
ing in tents, as it were, and morally shivering by 
hearths which, heap the bituminous coal upon them 
as we might, no blaze could render cheerful. I re- 
member, to this day, the dreary feeling with which I 
sat by our first English fireside, and watched the chill 
and rainy twilight of an autumn day darkening down 
upon the garden ; while the portrait of the preceding 
occupant of the house (evidently a most unamiable 
personage in his lifetime) scowled inhospitably from 
above the mantel-piece, as if indignant that an 
American should try to make himself at home there. 
Possibly it may appease his sulky shade to know that 
I quitted his abode as much a stranger as I entered 
it. But now, at last, we were in a genuine British 
home, where refined and warm-hearted people had 
just been living their daily life, and had left us a 
summer's inheritance of slowly ripened days, such as 
a stranger's hasty opportunities so seldom permit him 
to enjoy. 

Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of 
all the world, (which, as Americans have at present 
no centre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere 
in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul's Cathedral,) 
it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed 
about by the turbulence of the vast London whirlpool. 
But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting 
movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good 
deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my 
temporary haven more attractive than anything that 
the great town could offer. I already knew London 
well ; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so far 



242 OUR OLD HOME. 

as it was capable of satisfaction) that mysterious 
yearning — the magnetism of millions of hearts operat- 
ing upon one — which impels every man's individuality 
to mingle itself with the immensest mass of human 
life within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier 
period, I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the 
broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange 
labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens and en- 
closures of ancient studious societies, so retired and 
silent amid the city-uproar, the markets, the foggy 
streets along the riverside, the bridges, — I had sought 
all parts of the metropolis, in short, with an un- 
weariable and indiscriminating curiosity ; until few of 
the native inhabitants, I fancy, had turned so many 
of its corners as myself. These aimless wanderings 
(in which my prime purpose and achievement were 
to lose my way, and so to find it the more surely) had 
brought me, at one time or another, to the sight and 
actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned 
localities that I had read about, and which had made 
London the dream-city of my youth. I had found it 
better than my dream ; for there is nothing else in life 
comparable (in that species of enjoyment, I mean) to 
the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which an 
American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to 
call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of Lon- 
don. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling 
there, as nowhere else in the world, — though after- 
wards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment 
in regard to Rome ; and as long as either of those 
two great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and 
of the Present, a man's native soil may crumble be- 
neath his feet without leaving him altogether homeless 
upon earth. 



A LONDON SUBURB. 243 

Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I 
was in a manner free of the city, and could approach 
or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it happened, 
that, living within a quarter of an hour's rush of the 
London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener tempted to 
spend a whole summer-day in our garden than to seek 
anything new or old, wonderful or commonplace, be- 
yond its precincts. It was a delightful garden, of no 
great extent, but comprising a good many facilities for 
repose and enjoyment, such as arbors and garden- 
seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profu- 
sion of bloom, pinks, poppies, geraniums, sweet-peas, 
and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple 
blossoms, which I did not trouble myself to recognize 
individually, yet had always a vague sense of their 
beauty about me. The dim sky of England has 
a most happy effect on the coloring of flowers, blend- 
ing richness with delicacy in the same texture ; but in 
this garden, as everywhere else, the exuberance of 
English verdure had a greater charm than any tropical 
splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger for natural 
beauty might be satisfied with grass and green leaves 
forever. Conscious of the triumph of England in 
this respect, and loyally anxious for the credit of my 
own country, it gratified me to observe what trouble 
and pains the English gardeners are fain to throw 
away in producing a few sour plums and abortive 
pears and apples, — as, for example, in this very gar- 
den, where a row of unhappy trees were spread out 
perfectly flat against a brick wall, looking as if impaled 
alive, or crucified, with a cruel and unattainable pur- 
pose of compelling them to produce rich fruit by 
torture. For my part, I never ate an English fruit, 
raised in the open air, that could compare in flavor 
with a Yankee turnip. 



244 0UR 0LD HOME. 

The garden included that prime feature of English 
domestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, care- 
fully shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on 
which we sometimes essayed to practise the time- 
honored game of bowls, most unskilfully, yet not 
without a perception that it involves a very pleasant 
mixture of exercise and ease, as is the case with most 
of the old English pastimes. Our little domain was 
shut in by the house on one side, and in other direc- 
tions by a hedge-fence and a brick wall, which last 
was concealed or softened by shrubbery and the im- 
paled fruit-trees already mentioned. Over all the 
outer region, beyond our immediate precincts, there 
was an abundance of foliage, tossed aloft from the 
near or distant trees with which that agreeable suburb 
is adorned. The effect was wonderfully sylvan and 
rural, insomuch that we might have fancied ourselves 
in the depths of a wooded seclusion ; only that, at brief 
intervals, we could hear the galloping sweep of a railway 
train passing within a quarter of a mile, and its discord- 
ant screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it 
reached the Blackheath Station. That harsh, rough 
sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of 
the great world summoning me forth. I know not 
whether I was the more pained or pleased to be thus 
constantly put in mind of the neighborhood of Lon- 
don ; for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a 
little for reading a book, or playing with children in 
the grass, when there were so many better things for 
an enlightened traveller to do, — while, at the same 
time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness, 
to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On 
the whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted 
hour, and only wish that I could have spent twice as 



A LONDON SUBURB. 245 

many in the same way ; for the impression on my 
memory is, that I was as happy in that hospitable 
garden as the English summer-day was long. 

One chief condition of my enjoyment was the 
weather. Italy has nothing like it, nor America. 
There never was such weather except in England, 
where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible east- 
wind between February and June, and a brown 
October and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless 
winter, there are a few weeks of incomparable sum- 
mer, scattered through July and August, and the 
earlier portion of September, small in quantity, but 
exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmos- 
pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent som- 
breness may have brought out those sunny intervals 
in such high relief, that I see them, in my recollec- 
tion, brighter than they really were : a little light 
makes a glory for people who live habitually in a gray 
gloom. The English, however, do not seem to know 
how enjoyable the momentary gleams of their sum- 
mer are ; they call it broiling weather, and hurry to 
the seaside with red, perspiring faces, in a state of com- 
bustion and deliquescence ; and I have observed trmt 
even their cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking 
the deepest shade, or standing mid-leg deep in pools 
and streams to cool themselves, at temperatures which 
our own cows would deem little more than barely 
comfortable. To myself, after the summer heats of 
my native land had somewhat effervesced out of my 
blood and memory, it was the weather of Paradise 
itself. It might be a little too warm ; but it was that 
modest and inestimable superabundance which con- 
stitutes a bounty of Providence, instead of just a nig- 
gardly enough. During my first year in England, 



246 OUR OLD HOME. 

residing in perhaps the most ungenial part of the 
kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without 
a fire on the hearth ; in the second twelvemonth, 
beginning to get acclimatized, I became sensible of an 
austere friendliness, shy, but sometimes almost tender, 
in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smiling summer ; and 
in the succeeding years — whether that I had renewed 
my fibre with English beef and replenished my blood 
with English ale, or whatever were the cause — I grew 
content with winter and especially in love with summer, 
desiring little more for happiness than merely to 
breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are 
now speaking of, I must needs confess that the noon- 
tide sun came down more fervently than I found al- 
together tolerable ; so that I was fain to shift my 
position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making 
myself the movable index of a sundial that reckoned 
up the hours of an almost interminable day. 

For each day seemed endless, though never weari- 
some. As far as your actual experience is concerned, 
the English summer-day has positively no beginning 
and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable 
h^ur, the sun is already shining through the curtains ; 
you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath qui- 
etude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched 
upon their tranquil lapse ; and at length you become 
conscious that it is bedtime again, while there is still 
enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your 
book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such 
season, hangs down a transparent veil through which 
the bygone day beholds its successor ; or, if not quite 
true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly 
affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that 
To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is dead. They 



A LONDON SUBURB. 247 

exist together in the golden twilight, where the decrepit 
old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous infant ; 
and you, though a mere mortal, may simultaneously 
touch them both, with one finger of recollection and 
another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day 
might be, nor how many of them. I had earned this 
repose by a long course of irksome toil and perturba- 
tion, and could have been content never to stray out 
of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. If 
I lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me 
well enough to dream about it, instead of struggling 
for its actual possession. At least, this was the feel- 
ing of the moment ; although the transitory, flitting, 
and irresponsible character of my life there was per- 
haps the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing me 
much of the comfort of house and home without any 
sense of their weight upon my back. The nomadic 
life has great advantages, if we can find tents ready 
pitched for us at every stage. 

So much for the interior of our abode, — a spot of 
deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity. 
But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we 
were not shocked with any immediate presence of the 
great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases 
that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I 
believe) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which 
otherwise offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in 
singular proximity to the metropolis. As a general 
thing, the proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in 
everybody and nobody ; but exclusive rights have 
been obtained, here and there, chiefly by men whose 
daily concerns link them with London, so that you 
find their villas or boxes standing along village streets 
which have often more of an American aspect than 



248 OUR OLD HOME. 

the elder English settlements. The scene is semi- 
rural. Ornamental trees overshadow the sidewalks, 
and grassy margins border the wheel-tracks. The 
houses, to be sure, have certain points of difference 
from those of an American village, bearing tokens of 
architectural design, though seldom of individual 
taste ; and, as far as possible, they stand aloof from 
the street, and separated each from its neighbor by 
hedge or fence, in accordance with the careful ex- 
clusiveness of the English character, which impels the 
occupant, moreover, to cover the front of his dwelling 
with as much concealment of shrubbery as his limits 
will allow. Through the interstices, you catch 
glimpses of well-kept lawns, generally ornamented 
with flowers, and with what the English call rock- 
work, being heaps of ivy-grown stones and fossils, 
designed for romantic effect in a small way. Two or 
three of such village streets as are here described take 
a collective name, — as, for instance, Blackheath Park, 
— and constitute a kind of community of residents, 
with gateways, kept by a policeman, and a semi- 
privacy, stepping beyond which, you find yourself on 
the breezy heath. 

On this great, bare, dreary common I often went 
astray, as I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, 
and drew the air (tainted with London smoke though 
it might be) into my lungs by deep inspirations, with 
a strange and unexpected sense of desert freedom . The 
misty atmosphere helps you to fancy a remoteness 
that perhaps does not quite exist. During the little 
time that it lasts, the solitude is as impressive as that 
of a Western prairie or forest ; but soon the railway 
shriek, a mile or two away, insists upon informing 
you of your whereabouts ; or you recognize in the 



A LONDON SUBURB. 249 

distance some landmark that you may have known, 
— an insulated villa, perhaps, with its garden wall 
around it, or the rudimental street of a new settle- 
ment which is sprouting on this otherwise barren 
soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of 
man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gib- 
bet, and the creak, like a tavern sign, of a murderer 
swinging to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its 
highwaymen and footpads, was dangerous in those 
days ; and even now, for aught I know, the Western 
prairie may still compare favorably with it as a safe 
region to go astray in. When I was acquainted with 
Blackheath, the ingenious device of garroting had 
recently come into fashion ; and I can remember, 
while crossing those waste places at midnight, and 
hearing footsteps behind me, to have been sensibly 
encouraged by also hearing, not far off, the clinking 
hoof-tramp of one of the horse-patrols who do regu- 
lar duty there. About sunset, or a little later, was 
the time when the broad and somewhat desolate 
peculiarity of the heath seemed to me to put on its 
utmost impressiveness. At that hour, finding myself 
on elevated ground, I once had a view of immense 
London, four or five miles off, with the vast Dome in 
the midst, and the towers of the two Houses of Parlia- 
ment rising up into the smoky canopy, the thinner 
substance of which obscured a mass of things, and 
hovered about the objects that were most distinctly 
visible, — a glorious and 'sombre picture, dusky, 
awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a young man's 
dream of the great world, foretelling at that distance 
a grandeur never to be fully realized. 

While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of 
two or three sets of cricket-players were constantly 



250 OUR OLD HOME. 

pitched on Blackheath, and matches were going for- 
ward that seemed to involve the honor and credit of 
communities or counties, exciting an interest in every- 
body but myself, who cared not what part of England 
might glorify itself at the expense of another. It is 
necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in 
order to enjoy this great national game ; at any rate, 
as a spectacle for an outside observer, I found it lazy, 
lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of pictorial 
effects. Choice of other amusements was at hand. 
Butts for archery were established, and bows and 
arrows were to be let, at so many shots for a penny, 
— there being abundance of space for a farther flight- 
shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. 
Then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick 
at crockery ware, which I have witnessed a hundred 
times, and personally engaged in once or twice, with- 
out ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken 
crockery. In other spots you found donkeys for 
children to ride, and ponies of a very meek and pa- 
tient spirit, on which the Cockney pleasure seekers of 
both sexes rode races and made wonderful displays 
of horsemanship. By way of refreshment there was 
gingerbread, (but, as a true patriot, I must pronounce 
it greatly inferior to our native dainty,) and ginger- 
beer, and probably stancher liquor among the booth- 
keeper's hidden stores. The frequent railway trains, as 
well as the numerous steamers to Greenwich, have made 
the vacant portions of Bfackheath a play-ground and 
breathing-place for the Londoners, readily and very 
cheaply accessible ; so that, in view of this broader use 
and enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have 
been filched away, so to speak, and individualized by 
thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially in- 



A LONDON SUBURB. 25 I 

terested me : they were schools of little boys or girls, 
under the guardianship of their instructors, — charity 
schools, as I often surmised from their aspect, col- 
lected among dark alleys and squalid courts ; and 
hither they were brought to spend a summer after- 
noon, these pale little progeny of the sunless nooks of 
London, who had never known that the sky was any 
broader than that narrow and vapory strip above their 
native lane. I fancied that they took but a doubtful 
pleasure, being half affrighted at the wide, empty 
space overhead and round about them, finding the 
air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and grave- 
yard exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and 
feeling shelterless and lost because grimy London, 
their slatternly and disreputable mother, had suffered 
them to stray out of her arms. 

Passing among these holiday people, we come to 
one of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening 
through an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare 
heath into a scene of antique cultivation and wood- 
land ornament, traversed in all directions by avenues 
of trees, many of which bear tokens of a venerable 
age. These broad and well-kept pathways rise and 
decline over the elevations and along the bases of 
gentle hills which diversify the whole surface of the 
Park. The loftiest and most abrupt of them (though 
but of very moderate height) is one of the earth's 
noted summits, and may hold up its head with Mont 
Blanc and Chimborazo, as being the site of Green- 
wich Observatory, where, if all nations will consent to 
say so, the longitude of our great globe begins. I 
used to regulate my watch by the broad dial-plate 
against the Observatory wall, and felt it pleasant to 
be standing at the very centre of Time and Space. 



252 OUR OLD HOME. 

There are lovelier parks than this in the neighbor- 
hood of London, richer scenes of greensward and 
cultivated trees ; and Kensington, especially, in a 
summer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as 
any place can or ought to be, in a world which, some 
time or other, we must quit. But Greenwich, too, is 
beautiful, — a spot where the art of man has conspired 
with Nature, as if he and the great mother had taken 
counsel together how to make a pleasant scene, and 
the longest liver of the two had faithfully carried out 
their mutual design. It has, likewise an additional 
charm of its own, because, to all appearance, it is the 
people's property and play-ground in a much more 
genuine way than the aristocratic resorts in closer 
vicinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the 
instances in which the monarch's property is actu- 
ally the people's, and shows how much more natural 
is their relation to the sovereign than to the nobility, 
which pretends to hold the intervening space between 
the two : for a nobleman makes a paradise only 
for himself, and fills it with his own pomp and pride ; 
whereas the people are sooner or later the legitimate 
inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create, 
as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays, when the 
sun shone, and even on those grim and sombre days 
when, if it do not actually rain, the English persist in 
calling it fine weather, it was too good to see how 
sturdily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and 
what fulness of simple enjoyment they evidently 
found there. They were the people, — not the popu- 
lace, — specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes are 
a distinct kind of garb from their week-day ones ; 
and this, in England implies wholesome habits of life, 
daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to 



A LONDON SUBURB. 2$$ 

be acquainted with them, in order to investigate what 
manner of folks they were, what sort of households 
they kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, 
and whether they were as narrow-minded as their 
betters. There can be very little doubt of it : an 
Englishman is English, in whatever rank of life, 
though no more intensely so, I should imagine, as an 
artisan or petty shopkeeper, than as a member of 
Parliament. 

The English character, as I conceive it, is by no 
means a very lofty one ; they seem to have a great 
deal of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as 
was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrel- 
some people who sprouted up out of the soil, after 
Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth. And yet, 
though the individual Englishman is sometimes pre- 
ternaturally disagreeable, an observer standing aloof 
has a sense of natural kindness towards them in 
the lump. They adhere closer to the original sim- 
plicity in which mankind was created than we ourselves 
do ; they love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn their 
actual selves inside out, with greater freedom than 
any class of Americans would consider decorous. It 
was often so with these holiday folks in Greenwich 
Park ; and, ridiculous as it may sound, I fancy 
myself to have caught very satisfactory glimpses of 
Arcadian life among the Cockneys there, hardly 
beyond the scope of Bow-Bells, picnicking in the 
grass, uncouthly gambolling on the broad slopes, or 
straying in motley groups or by single pairs of love- 
making youths and maidens, along the sun-streaked 
avenues. Even the omnipresent policemen or park- 
keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my 
mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden Age 



254 0UR 0LD HOME. 

was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered 
you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and 
were readily prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread 
out of your hand. But, though no wrong had ever 
been done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound 
bayed at the heels of themselves or their antlered 
progenitors, for centuries past, there was still an 
apprehensiveness lingering in their hearts ; so that 
a slight movement of the hand or a step too near 
would send a whole squadron of them scampering 
away, just as a breath scatters the winged seeds of a 
dandelion. 

The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those festal 
people wandering through it, resembled that of the 
Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a 
Sunday or Saint's day ; but, I am not ashamed to 
say, it a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of 
Puritanic strictness might be lingering in the sombre 
depths of a New England heart, among severe and 
sunless remembrances of the Sabbaths of childhood, 
and pangs of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the cate- 
chism, and for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed 
laughter in the middle of long sermons. Occasionally, 
I tried to take the long-hoarded sting out of these 
compunctious smarts by attending divine service in 
the open air. On a cart outside of the Park-wall 
(and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners and 
secluded spots within the Park itself) a Methodist 
preacher uplifts his voice and speedily gathers a 
congregation, his zeal for whose religious welfare 
impels the good man to such earnest vociferation and 
toilsome gesture that his perspiring face is quickly in 
a stew. His inward flame conspires with the too 
fervid sun and makes a positive martyr of him, even 



A LONDON SUBURB. 255 

in the very exercise of his pious labor ; insomuch 
that he purchases every atom of spiritual increment 
to his hearers by loss of his own corporeal solidity, 
and, should his discourse last long enough, must 
finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at him, 
be it understood, it is not in scorn ; he performs his 
sacred office more acceptably than many a prelate. 
These wayside services attract numbers who would 
not otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, 
from one year's end to another, and who, for that 
very reason, are the auditors most likely to be moved 
by the preacher's eloquence. Yonder Greenwich 
pensioner, too, — in his costume of three-cornered 
hat and old-fashioned, brass-buttoned blue coat with 
ample skirts, which makes him look like a contem- 
porary of Admiral Benbow, — that tough old mar- 
iner may hear a word or two which will go nearer 
his heart than anything that the chaplain of the 
Hospital can be expected to deliver. I always 
noticed, moreover, that a considerable proportion 
of the audience were soldiers, who came hither with 
a day's leave from Woolwich, — hardy veterans in 
aspect, some of whom wore as many as four or five 
medals, Crimean or East-Indian, on the breasts of 
their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous congregation 
listen with every appearance of heartfelt interest ; and, 
for my own part, I must frankly acknowledge that 
I never found it possible to give five minutes' atten- 
tion to any other English preaching : so cold and 
commonplace are the homilies that pass for such, 
under the aged roofs of churches. And as for cathe- 
drals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminutive and 
unimportant part of the religious services, — if, indeed, 
it be considered a part, — among the pompous cer- 



256 OUR OLD HOME. 

emonies, the intonations, and the resounding and 
lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The magnifi- 
cence of the setting quite dazzles out what we Puri- 
tans look upon as the jewel of the whole affair ; for 
I presume that it was our forefathers, the Dissenters 
in England and America, who gave the sermon its 
present prominence in the Sabbath exercises. 

The Methodists are probably the first and only 
Englishmen who have worshipped in the open air 
since the ancient Britons listened to the preaching of 
the Druids ; and it reminded me of that old priest- 
hood, to see certain memorials of their dusky epoch 
— not religious, however, but warlike — in the neigh- 
borhood of the spot where the Methodist was holding 
forth. These were some ancient barrows, beneath or 
within which are supposed to lie buried the slain of 
a forgotten or doubtfully remembered battle, fought on 
the site of Greenwich Park as long ago as two or 
three centuries after the birth of Christ. Whatever 
may once have been their height and magnitude, they 
have now scarcely more prominence in the actual 
scene than the battle of which they are the sole 
monuments retains in history, — being only a few 
mounds side by side, elevated a little above the sur- 
face of the ground, ten or twelve feet in diameter, with 
a shallow depression in their summits. When one 
of them was opened, not long since, no bones, nor 
armor, nor weapons were discovered, nothing but 
some small jewels, and a tuft of hair, — perhaps from 
the head of a valiant general, who, dying on the field 
of his victory, bequeathed this lock, together with his 
indestructible fame, to after ages. The hair and 
jewels are probably in the British Museum, where the 
potsherds and rubbish of innumerable generations 



A LONDON SUBURB. 2 57 

make the visitor wish that each passing century could 
carry off all its fragments and relics along with it, 
instead of adding them to the continually accumulat- 
ing burden which human knowledge is compelled to 
lug upon its back. As for the fame, I know not what 
has become of it. 

After traversing the Park, we come into the neigh- 
borhood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through 
one of its spacious gateways for the sake of glancing 
at an establishment which does more honor to the 
heart of England than anything else that I am 
acquainted with, of a public nature. It is very seldom 
that we can be sensible of anything like kindliness in 
the acts or relations of such an artificial thing as a 
National Government. Our own Government, I 
should conceive, is too much an abstraction ever to 
feel any sympathy for its maimed sailors and soldiers, 
though it will doubtless do them a severe kind of jus- 
tice, as chilling as the touch of steel. But it seemed 
to me that the Greenwich pensioners are the petted 
children of the nation, and that the Government 
is their dry-nurse, and that the old men themselves 
have a childlike consciousness of their position. 
Very likely, a better sort of life might have been 
arranged, and a wiser care bestowed on them ; but, 
such as it is, it enables them to spend a sluggish, 
careless, comfortable old age, grumbling, growling, 
gruff, as if all the foul weather of their past years were 
pent up within them, yet not much more discontented 
than such weather-beaten and battle-battered frag- 
ments of human kind must inevitably be. Their home, 
in its outward form, is on a very magnificent plan. Its 
germ was a royal palace, the full expansion of which 
has resulted in a series of edifices externally more 



258 OUR OLD HOME. 

beautiful than any English palace that I have seen, 
consisting of several quadrangles of stately architec- 
ture, united by colonnades and gravel walks, and 
enclosing grassy squares, with statues in the centre, 
the whole extending along the Thames. It is built of 
marble, or very light-colored stone, in the classic style, 
with pillars and porticos, which (to my own taste, and, 
I fancy, to that of the old sailors) produce but a cold 
and shivery effect in the English climate. Had I been 
the architect, I would have studied the characters, 
habits, and predilections of nautical people in Wrap- 
ping, Rotherhithe, and the neighborhood of the Tower, 
(places which I visited in affectionate remembrance of 
Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual or mytho- 
logical navigators,) and would have built the hospital 
in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, 
ugly, and inconvenient, but snug and cozy homeliness 
of the sailor boarding-houses there. There can be 
no question that all the above attributes, or enough of 
them to satisfy an old sailor's heart, might be recon- 
ciled with architectural beauty and the wholesome 
contrivances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel 
and genuine style of building be given to the world. 

But their countrymen meant kindly by the old 
fellows in assigning them the ancient royal site where 
Elizabeth held her court and Charles II. began to 
build his palace. So far as the locality went, it was 
treating them like so many kings ; and, with a discreet 
abundance of grog, beer, and tobacco, there was per- 
haps little more to be accomplished in behalf of men 
whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them 
for old age. Their chief discomfort is probably for 
lack of something to do or think about. But, judging 
by the few whom I saw, a listless habit seems to 



A LONDON SUBURB. 259 

have crept over them, a dim dreaminess of mood, in 
which they sit between asleep and awake, and find 
the long day wearing towards bedtime without its hav- 
ing made any distinct record of itself upon their con- 
sciousness. Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, 
they subside into slumber, or nearly so, and start at 
the approach of footsteps echoing under the colon- 
nades, ashamed to be caught napping, and rousing 
themselves in a hurry, as formerly on the midnight 
watch at sea. In their brightest moments, they 
gather in groups and bore one another with endless 
sea-yarns about their voyages under famous admirals, 
and about gale and calm, battle and chase, and all 
that class of incident that has its sphere on the deck 
and in the hollow interior of a ship, where their world 
has exclusively been. For other pastime, they quarrel 
among themselves, comrade with comrade, and per- 
haps shake paralytic fists in furrowed faces. If in- 
clined for a little exercise, they can bestir their wooden 
legs on the long esplanade that borders by the Thames, 
criticising the rig of passing ships, and firing off 
volleys of malediction at the steamers, which have 
made the sea another element than that they used to 
be acquainted with. All this is but cold comfort for 
the evening of life, yet may compare rather favorably 
with the preceding portions of it, comprising little 
save imprisonment on shipboard, in the course of 
which they have been tossed all about the world and 
caught hardly a glimpse of it, forgetting what grass 
and trees are, and never finding out what woman is, 
though they may have encountered a painted spectre 
which they took for her. A country owes much to 
human beings whose bodies she has worn out and 
whose immortal part she has left undeveloped or 



26o OUR OLD HOME. 

debased, as we find them here ; and having wasted an 
idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that 
old men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impres- 
sions, and even (up to an advanced period) a recep- 
tivity of truth, which often appears to come to them 
after the active time of life is past. The Greenwich 
pensioners might prove better subjects for true edu- 
cation now than in their school-boy days ; but then 
where is the Normal School that could educate in- 
structors for such a class ? 

There is a beautiful chapel for the pensioners, in the 
classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture 
by West. I never could look at it long enough to 
make out its design ; for this artist (though it pains 
me to say it of so respectable a countryman) had a 
gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, 
a power of stupefying the spectator's perceptions and 
quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that 
ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of 
conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong 
abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake 
of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty 
fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athe- 
naeum Exhibition. Would fire burn it, I wonder ? 

The principal thing that they have to show you, at 
Greenwich Hospital, is the Painted Hall. It is a 
splendid and spacious room, at least a hundred feet 
long and half as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco 
by Sir James Thornhill. As a work of art, I presume, 
this frescoed canopy has little merit, though it pro- 
duces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant color- 
ing and as a specimen of magnificent upholstery. 
The walls of the grand apartment are entirely covered 
with pictures, many of them representing battles and 



A LONDON SUBURB. 26 1 

other naval incidents that were once fresher in the 
world's memory than now, but chiefly portraits of old 
admirals, comprising the whole line of heroes who 
have trod the quarter-decks of British ships for more 
than two hundred years back. Next to a tomb in West- 
minster Abbey, which was Nelson's most elevated 
object of ambition, it would seem to be the highest 
meed of a naval warrior to have his portrait hung up 
in the Painted Hall ; but, by dint of victory upon vic- 
tory, these illustrious personages have grown to be a 
mob, and by no means a very interesting one, so far as 
regards the character of the faces here depicted. They 
are generally commonplace and often singularly stolid ; 
and I have observed (both in the Painted Hall and 
elsewhere, and not only in portraits, but in the actual 
presence of such renowned people as I have caught 
glimpses of) that the countenances of heroes are not 
nearly so impressive as those of statesmen, — except, 
of course, in the rare instances where warlike ability 
has been but the one-sided manifestation of a pro- 
found genius for managing the world's affairs. Nine 
tenths of these distinguished admirals, for instance, 
if their faces tell truth, must needs have been block- 
heads, and might have served better, one would 
imagine, as wooden figure-heads for their own ships 
than to direct any difficult and intricate scheme of 
action from the quarter deck. It is doubtful whether 
the same kind of men will hereafter meet with a simi- 
lar degree of success ; for they were victorious chiefly 
through the old English hardihood, exercised in a 
field of which modern science had not yet got posses- 
sion. Rough valor has lost something of its value, 
since their days, and must continue to sink lower and 
lower in the comparative estimate of warlike qualities. 



262 OUR OLD HOME. 

In the. next naval war, as between England and 
France, I would bet, methinks, upon the Frenchman's 
head. 

It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero 
of England — the greatest, therefore, in the world, and 
of all time — had none of the stolid characteristics that 
belong to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted as 
their representative man. Foremost in the roughest 
of professions, he was as delicately organized as a 
woman, and as painfully sensitive as a poet. More 
than any other Englishman he won the love and ad- 
miration of his country, but won them through the 
efficacy of qualities that are not English, or, at all 
events, were intensified in his case and made poignant 
and powerful by something morbid in the man, which 
put him otherwise at cross-purposes with life. He was 
a man of genius ; and genius in an Englishman (not 
to cite the good old simile of a pearl in the oyster) is 
usually a symptom of a lack of balance in the general 
making-up of the character ; as we may satisfy our- 
selves by running over the list of their poets, for ex- 
ample, and observing how many of them have been 
sickly or deformed, and how often their lives have 
been darkened by insanity. An ordinary Englishman 
is the healthiest and wholesomest of human beings; 
an extraordinary one is almost always, in one way or 
another, a sick man. It was so with Lord Nelson. 
The wonderful contrast or relation between his per- 
sonal qualities, the position which he held, and the 
life that he lived, makes him as interesting a per- 
sonage as all history has to show ; and it is a pity 
that Southey's biography — so good in its superficial 
way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real delin- 
eation of the man — should have taken the subject out 



A LONDON SUBURB. 263 

of the hands of some writer endowed with more deli- 
cate appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine 
Englishman possessed. But Southey accomplished 
his own purpose, which, apparently, was to present his 
hero as a pattern for England's young midshipmen. 

But the English capacity for hero-worship is full to 
the brim with what they are able to comprehend of 
Lord Nelson's character. Adjoining the Painted Hall 
is a smaller room, the walls of which are completely 
and exclusively adorned with pictures of the great 
Admiral's exploits. We see the frail, ardent man in 
all the most noted events of his career, from his en- 
counter with a Polar bear to his death at Trafalgar, 
quivering here and there about the room like a blue, 
lambent flame. No Briton ever enters that apartment 
without feeling the beef and ale of his composition 
stirred to its depths, and finding himself changed into 
a hero for the nonce, however stolid his brain, how- 
ever tough his heart, however unexcitable his ordi- 
nary mood. To confess the truth, I myself, though 
belonging to another parish, have been deeply sensible 
to the sublime recollections there aroused, acknowl- 
edging that Nelson expressed his life in a kind of 
symbolic poetry which I had as much right to under- 
stand as these burly islanders. Cool and critical ob- 
server as I sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of 
honest indignation when a visitor (not an American, 
I am glad to say) thrust his walking-stick almost into 
Nelson's face, in one of the pictures, by way of point- 
ing a remark ; and the bystanders immediately glowed 
like so many hot coals, and would probably have con- 
sumed the offender in their wrath, had he not effected 
his retreat. But the most sacred objects of all are two 
of Nelson's coats, under separate glass cases. One is 



264 OUR OLD HOME. 

that which he wore at the Battle of the Nile, and it is 
now sadly injured by moths, which will quite destroy 
it in a few years, unless its guardians preserve it as we 
do Washington's military suit, by occasionally baking 
it in an oven. The other is the coat in which he re- 
ceived his death-wound at Trafalgar. On its breast 
are sewed three or four stars and orders of knighthood, 
now much dimmed by time and damp, but which 
glittered brightly enough on the battle-day to draw 
the fatal aim of a French marksman. The bullet-hole 
is visible on the shoulder, as well as a part of the 
golden tassels of an epaulet, the rest of which was 
shot away. Over the coat is laid a white waistcoat 
with a great blood-stain on it, out of which all the 
redness has utterly faded, leaving it of a dingy yellow 
hue, in the threescore years since that blood gushed 
out. Yet it was once the reddest blood in England, 
— Nelson's blood ! 

The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of 
Greenwich, which will always retain a kind of festal 
aspect in my memory, in consequence of my having 
first become acquainted with it on Easter Monday. 
Till a few years ago, the first three days of Easter 
were a carnival season in this old town, during which 
the idle and disreputable part of London poured itself 
into the streets like an inundation of the Thames, — 
as unclean as that turbid mixture of the oifscourings 
of the vast city, and overflowing with its grimy pol- 
lution whatever rural innocence, if any, might be 
found in the suburban neighborhood. This festivity 
was called Greenwich Fair, the final one of which, in 
an immemorial succession, it was my fortune to 
behold. 

If I had bethought myself of going through the fair 



A LONDON SUBURB. 265 

with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the 
prominent objects, I doubt not that the result might 
have been a sketch of English life quite as character- 
istic and worthy of historical preservation as an ac- 
count of the Roman Carnival. Having neglected to 
do so, I remember little more than a confusion of un- 
washed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with 
some smarter figures, but, on the whole, presenting a 
mobbish appearance such as we never see in our own 
country. It taught me to understand why Shakspeare, 
in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to its attribute 
of evil odor. The common people of England, I am 
afraid, have no daily familiarity with even so necessary 
a thing as awash-bowl, not to mention a bathing-tub. 
And furthermore, it is one mighty difference between 
them and us, that every man and woman on our side 
of the water has a working-day suit and a holiday 
suit, and is occasionally as fresh as a rose, whereas, in 
the good old country, the griminess of his labor or 
squalid habits clings forever to the individual, and 
gets to be a part of his personal substance. These 
are broad facts, involving great corollaries and de- 
pendencies. There are really, if you stop to think 
about it, few sadder spectacles in the world than a 
ragged coat, or a soiled and shabby gown, at a festival. 
This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, 
being welded together, as it were, in the street 
through which we strove to make our way. On 
either side were oyster-stands, stalls of oranges, (a 
very prevalent fruit in England, where they give the 
withered ones a guise of freshness by boiling them,) 
and booths covered with old. sail-cloth, in which the 
commodity that most attracted the eye was gilt gin- 
ger-bread. It was so completely enveloped in Dutch 



266 OUR OLD HOME. 

gilding that I did not at first recognize an old acquaint- 
ance, but wondered what those golden crowns and 
images could be. There were likewise drums and 
other toys for small children, and a variety of showy 
and worthless articles for children of a larger growth ; 
though it perplexed me to imagine who, in such a 
mob, could have the innocent taste to desire play- 
things, or the money to pay for them. Not that I 
have a right to accuse the mob, on my own knowl- 
edge, of being any less innocent than a set of cleaner 
and better dressed people might have been; for, 
though one of them stole my pocket-handkerchief, I 
could not but consider it fair game, under the circum- 
stances, and was grateful to the thief for sparing me 
my purse. They were quiet, civil, and remarkably 
good-humored, making due allowance for the national 
gruffness ; there was no riot, no tumultuous swaying 
to and fro of the mass, such as I have often noted in 
an American crowd, no noise of voices, except fre- 
quent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, and a widely 
diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling nothing so 
much as the rumbling of the tide among the arches of 
London Bridge. What immensely perplexed me was 
a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off 
and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own 
back, where it sounded as if the stout fabric of my 
English surtout had been ruthlessly rent in twain; 
and everybody's clothes, all over the fair, were evi- 
dently being torn asunder in the same way. By and 
by, I discovered that this strange noise was produced 
by a little instrument called " The Fun of the Fair," 
— a sort of rattle, consisting of a wooden wheel, the 
cogs of which turn against a thin slip of wood, and so 
produce a rasping sound when drawn smartly against 



A LONDON SUBURB. 267 

a person's back. The ladies draw their rattles against 
the backs of their male friends, (and everybody passes 
for a friend at Greenwich Fair,) and the young men re- 
turn the compliment on the broad British backs of the 
ladies ; and all are bound by immemorial custom to 
take it in good part and be merry at the joke. As it 
was one of my prescribed official duties to give an 
account of such mechanical contrivances as might be 
unknown in my own country, I have thought it right 
to be thus particular in describing the Fun of the 
Fair. 

But this was far from being the sole amusement. 
There were theatrical booths, in front of which were 
pictorial representations of the scenes to be enacted 
within ; and anon a drummer emerged from one of 
them, thumping on a terribly lax drum, and followed 
by the entire dramatis persona?, who ranged them- 
selves on a wooden platform in front of the theatre. 
They were dressed in character, but wofully shabby, 
with very dingy and wrinkled white tights, threadbare 
cotton-velvets', crumpled silks, and crushed muslin, 
and all the gloss and glory gone out of their aspect 
and attire, seen thus in the broad daylight and after a 
long series of performances. They sang a song to- 
gether, and withdrew into the theatre, whither the 
public were invited to follow them at the inconsider- 
able cost of a penny a ticket. Before another booth 
stood a pair of brawny fighting-men, displaying their 
muscle, and soliciting patronage for an exhibition of 
the noble British art of pugilism. There were pictures 
of giants, monsters, and outlandish beasts, most pro- 
digious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, 
unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his 
subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles 



268 OUR OLD HOME. 

which they were prepared to work ; and posture- 
makers dislocated every joint of their bodies and tied 
their limbs into inextricable knots, wherever they 
could find space to spread a little square of carpet on 
the ground. In the midst of the confusion, while 
everybody was treading on his neighbor's toes, some 
little boys were very solicitous to brush your boots. 
These lads, I believe, are a product of modern society, 
— at least, no older than the time of Gay, who cele- 
brates their origin in his " Trivia " ; but in most 
other 'respects the scene reminded me of Bunyan's 
description of Vanity Fair, — nor is it at all improb- 
able that the Pilgrim may have been a merry-maker 
here, in his wild youth. 

It seemed very singular — though, of course, I imme- 
diately classified it as an English characteristic — to 
see a great many portable weighing-machines, the 
owners of which cried out continually and amain, — 
" Come, know your weight ! Come, come, know your 
weight to-day! Come, know your weight! " — and a 
multitude of people, mostly large in the girth, were 
moved by this vociferation to sit down in the ma- 
chines. I know not whether they valued themselves 
on their beef, and estimated their standing as mem- 
bers of society at so much a pound ; but I shall set it 
down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol of the 
prevalence of the earthly over the spiritual element, 
that Englishmen are wonderfully bent on knowing 
how solid and physically ponderous they are. 

On the whole, having an appetite for the brown 
bread and the tripe and sausages of life, as well as for 
its nicer cates and dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and 
was amused at the sight of a gruff old Greenwich 
pensioner, who, forgetful of the sailor-frolics of his 



A LONDON SUBURB. 269 

young days, stood looking with grim disapproval at 
all these vanities. Thus we squeezed our way through 
the mob-jammed town, and emerged into the Park, 
where, likewise, we met a great many merry-makers, 
but with freer space for their gambols than in th e streets. 
We soon found ourselves the targets for a cannonade 
with oranges, (most of them in a decayed condition,) 
which went humming past our ears from the vantage- 
ground of neighboring hillocks, sometimes hitting our 
sacred persons with an inelastic thump. This was 
one of the privileged freedoms of the time, and was 
nowise to be resented, except by returning the salute. 
Many persons were running races, hand in hand, 
down the declivities, especially that steepest one on 
the summit of which stands the world-central Observ- 
atory, and (as in the race of life) the partners were usu- 
ally male and female, and often caught a tumble together 
before reaching the bottom of the hill. Hereabouts 
we were pestered and haunted by two young girls, the 
eldest not more than thirteen, teasing us to buy 
matches; and finding no market for their commodity, 
the taller one suddenly turned a somerset before our 
faces, and rolled heels over head from top to bottom 
of the hill on which we stood. Then, scrambling up 
the acclivity, the topsy-turvy trollop offered us her 
matches again, as demurely as if she had never flung 
aside her equilibrium ; so that, dreading a repetition 
of the feat, we gave her sixpence and an admonition, 
and enjoined her never to do so any more. 

The most curious amusement that we witnessed 
here — or anywhere else, indeed — was an ancient 
and hereditary pastime called " Kissing in the Ring." 
I shall describe the sport exactly as I saw it, although 
an English friend assures me that there are certain 



27O OUR OLD HOME. 

ceremonies with a handkerchief, which make it much 
more decorous and graceful. A handkerchief, indeed! 
There was no such thing in the crowd, except it wece 
the one which they had just filched out of my pocket. 
It is one of the simplest kinds of games, needing little 
or no practice to make the player altogether perfect ; 
and the manner of it is this. A ring is formed, (in 
the present case, it was of large circumference and 
thickly gemmed around with faces, mostly on the 
broad grin,) into the centre of which steps an adven- 
turous youth, and, looking round the circle, selects 
whatever maiden may most delight his eye. He 
presents his hand, (which she is bound to accept,) 
leads her into the centre, salutes her on the lips, and 
retires, taking his stand in the expectant circle. The 
girl, in her turn, throws a favorable regard on some 
fortunate young man, offers her hand to lead him 
forth, makes him happy with a maidenly kiss, and 
withdraws to hide her blushes, if any there be, among 
the simpering faces in the ring ; while the favored 
swain loses no time in transferring her salute to the 
prettiest and plumpest among the many mouths that 
are primming themselves in anticipation. And thus 
the thing goes on, till all the festive throng are in- 
wreathed and intertwined into an endless and inex- 
tricable chain of kisses ; though, indeed, it smote me 
with compassion to reflect that some forlorn pair of 
lips might be left out, and never know the triumph of 
a salute, after throwing aside so many delicate reserves 
for the sake of winning it. If the young men had any 
chivalry, there was a fair chance to display it by kissing 
the homeliest damsel in the circle. 

To be frank, however, at the first glance, and to my 
American eye, they looked all homely alike, and the 



A LONDON SUBURB. 2J\ 

chivalry that I suggest is more than I could have been 
capable of, at any period of my life. They seemed to 
be country -lasses, of sturdy and wholesome aspect, 
with coarse-grained, cabbage-rosy cheeks, and, I am 
willing to suppose, a stout texture of moral principle, 
such as would bear a good deal of rough usage with- 
out suffering much detriment. But how unlike the 
trim little damsels of my native land ! I desire above 
all things to be courteous ; but, since the plain truth 
must be told, the soil and climate of England produce 
feminine beauty as rarely as they do delicate fruit, and 
though admirable specimens of both are to be met 
with, they are the hot-house ameliorations of refined 
society, and apt, moreover, to relapse into the coarse- 
ness of the original stock. The men are man-like, 
but the women are not beautiful, though the female 
Bull be well enough adapted to the male. To return 
to the lasses of Greenwich Fair, their charms were 
few, and their behavior, perhaps, not altogether com- 
mendable ; and yet it was impossible not to feel a de- 
gree of faith in their innocent intentions, with such a 
half-bashful zest and entire simplicity did they keep up 
their part of the game. It put the spectator in good- 
humor to look at them, because there was still something 
of the old Arcadian life, the secure freedom of the an- 
tique age, in their way of surrendering their lips to 
strangers, as if there were no evil or impurity in the 
world. As for the young men, they were chiefly 
specimens of the vulgar sediment of London life, often 
shabbily genteel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the un- 
brushed coat, unshifted linen, and unwashed faces of 
yesterday, as well as the haggardness of last night's 
jollity in a gin-shop. Gathering their character from 
these tokens, I wondered whether there were any 



272 OUR OLD HOME. 

reasonable prospect of their fair partners returning to 
their rustic homes with as much innocence (whatever 
were its amount or quality) as they brought to Green- 
wich Fair, in spite of the perilous familiarity estab- 
lished by Kissing in the Ring. 

The manifold disorders resulting from the fair, at 
which a vast city was brought into intimate relations 
with a comparatively rural district, have at length led 
to its suppression ; this was the very last celebration 
of it, and brought to a close the broad-mouthed merri- 
ment of many hundred years. Thus my poor sketch, 
faint as its colors are, may acquire some little value 
in the reader's eyes from the consideration that no 
observer of the coming time will ever have an oppor- 
tunity to give a better. I should find it difficult to 
believe, however, that the queer pastime just described, 
or any moral mischief to which that and other customs 
might pave the way, can have led to the overthrow 
of Greenwich Fair ; for it has often seemed to me 
that Englishmen of station and respectability, unless of 
a peculiarly philanthropic turn, have neither any faith 
in the feminine purity of the lower orders of their 
countrywomen, nor the slightest value for it, allowing 
its possible existence. The distinction of ranks is 
so marked, that the English cottage damsel holds 
a position somewhat analogous to that of the negro 
girl in our Southern States. Hence comes inevit- 
able detriment to the moral condition of those 
men themselves, who forget that the humblest woman 
has a right and a duty to hold herself in the same 
sanctity as the highest. The subject cannot well be 
discussed in these pages ; but I offer it as a serious 
conviction, from what I have been able to observe, 
that the England of to-day is the unscrupulous old 



A LONDON SUBURB. 273 

England of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, Hum- 
phrey Clinker and Roderick Random ; and in our re- 
fined era, just the same as at that more free-spoken 
epoch, this singular people has a certain contempt for 
any fine-strained purity, any special squeamishness, 
as they consider it, on the part of an ingenuous youth. 
They appear to look upon it as a suspicious phenome- 
non in the masculine character. 

Nevertheless, I by no means take upon me to affirm 
that English morality, as regards the phase here 
alluded to, is really at a lower point than our own. 
Assuredly, I hope so, because, making a higher pre- 
tension, or, at all events, more carefully hiding what- 
ever may be amiss, we are either better than they, or 
necessarily a great deal worse. It impressed me that 
their open avowal and recognition of immoralities 
served to throw the disease to the surface, where it 
might be more effectually dealt with, and leave a 
sacred interior not utterly profaned, instead of turning 
its poison back among the inner vitalities of the 
character, at the imminent risk of corrupting them all. 
Be that as it may, these Englishmen are certainly a 
franker and simpler people than ourselves, from peer 
to peasant ; but if we can take it as compensatory on 
our part, (which I leave to be considered,) that they 
owe those noble and manly qualities to a coarser grain 
in their nature, and that, with a finer one in ours, we 
shall ultimately acquire a marble polish of which they 
are unsusceptible, I believe that this may be the 
truth. 



2/4 0UR 0LD HOME. 



UP THE THAMES. 

The upper portion of Greenwich (where my last 
article left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, old- 
fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, if there be 
any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you 
descend towards the Thames, the streets get meaner, 
and the shabby and sunken houses, elbowing one an- 
other for frontage, bear the sign-boards of beer-shops 
and eating-rooms, with especial promises of whitebait 
and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, 
also, a frequent announcement of " Tea Gardens " in 
the rear ; although, estimating the capacity of the 
premises by their external compass, the entire sylvan 
charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts 
must be limited within a small back-yard. These 
places of cheap sustenance and recreation depend for 
support upon the innumerable pleasure parties who 
come from London Bridge by steamer, at a fare of a 
few pence, and who get as enjoyable a meal for a 
shilling a head as the Ship Hotel would afford a gen- 
tleman for a guinea. 

The steamers, which are constantly smoking their 
pipes up and down the Thames, offer much the most 
agreeable mode of getting to London. At least, it 
might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad 
floating particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the 
heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered 
deck, or the chill, misty air-draught of a cloudy day, 



UP THE THAMES. 2?$ 

and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter 
down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise 
of the sky ; besides which there is some slight incon- 
venience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers, 
who scarcely allow you standing-room, nor so much 
as a breath of unappropriated air, and never a chance 
to sit down. If these difficulties, added to the possi- 
bility of getting your pocket picked, weigh little with 
you, the panorama along the shores of the memorable 
river, and the incidents and shows of passing life upon 
its bosom, render the trip far preferable to the brief, 
yet tiresome shoot along the railway track. On one 
such voyage, a regatta of wherries raced past us, and 
at once involved every soul on board our steamer in the 
tremendous excitement of the struggle. The specta- 
cle was but a moment within our view, and presented 
nothing more than a few light skiffs, in each of which 
sat a single rower, bare-armed, and with little apparel 
save a shirt and drawers, pale, anxious, with every mus- 
cle on the stretch, and plying his oars in such fashion 
that the boat skimmed along with the aerial celerity of 
a swallow. I wondered at myself for so immediately 
catching an interest in the affair, which seemed to 
contain no very exalted rivalship of manhood ; but, 
whatever the kind of battle or the prize of victory, it 
stirs one's sympathy immensely, and is even awful, to 
behold the rare sight of a man thoroughly in earnest, 
doing his best, putting forth all there is in him, and 
staking his very soul (as these rowers appeared will- 
ing to do) on the issue of the contest. It was the 
seventy-fourth annual regatta of the Free Watermen 
of Greenwich, and announced itself as under the pat- 
ronage of the Lord Mayor and other distinguished 
individuals, at whose expense, I suppose, a prize-boat 



276 OUR OLD HOME. 

was offered to the conqueror, and some small amounts 
of money to the inferior competitors. 

The aspect of London along the Thames, below 
Bridge, as it is called, is by no means so impressive 
as it ought to be, considering what peculiar advan- 
tages are offered for the display of grand and stately 
architecture by the passage of a river through the 
midst of a great city. It seems, indeed, as if the 
heart of London had been cleft open for the mere pur- 
pose of showing how rotten and drearily mean it had 
become. The shore is lined with the shabbiest, black- 
est, and ugliest buildings that can be imagined, decayed 
warehouses with blind windows, and wharves that 
look ruinous ; insomuch that, had I known nothing 
more of the world's metropolis, I might have fancied 
that it had already experienced the downfall which I 
have heard commercial and financial prophets predict 
for it, within the century. And the muddy tide of the 
Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million of 
unclean secrets within its breast, — a sort of guilty 
conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets 
of sin that constantly flow into it, — is just the dismal 
stream to glide by such a city. The surface, to be 
sure, displays no lack of activity, being fretted by the 
passage of a hundred steamers and covered with a 
good deal of shipping, but mostly of a clumsier build 
than I had been accustomed to see in the Mersey : a 
fact which I complacently attributed to the smaller 
number of American clippers in the Thames, and the 
less prevalent influence of American example in refin- 
ing away the broad-bottomed capacity of the old Dutch 
or English models. 

About midway between Greenwich and London 
Bridge, at a rude landing-place on the left bank of the 



UP THE THAMES. 2JJ 

river, the steamer rings its bell and makes a momentary 
pause in front of a large circular structure, where it may 
be worth our while to scramble ashore. It indicates 
the locality of one of those prodigious practical blun- 
ders that would supply John Bull with a topic of inex- 
haustible ridicule, if his cousin Jonathan had committed 
them, but of which he himself perpetrates ten to our 
one in the mere wantonness of wealth that lacks 
better employment. The circular building covers the 
entrance to the Thames Tunnel, and is surmounted 
by a dome of glass, so as to throw daylight down into 
the great depth at which the passage of the river com- 
mences. Descending a wearisome succession of stair- 
cases, we at last find ourselves, still in the broad noon, 
standing before a closed door, on opening which we 
behold the vista of an arched corridor that extends 
into everlasting midnight. In these days, when glass 
has been applied to so many new purposes, it is a pity 
that the architect had not thought of arching portions 
of his abortive tunnel with immense blocks of the 
lucid substance, over which the dusky Thames would 
have flowed like a cloud, making the sub-fluvial avenue 
only a little gloomier than a street of upper London. 
At present, it is illuminated at regular intervals by jets 
of gas, not very brilliantly, yet with lustre enough to 
show the damp plaster of the ceiling and walls, and 
the massive stone pavement, the crevices of which are 
oozy with moisture, not from the incumbent river, but 
from hidden springs in the earth's deeper heart. 
There are two parallel corridors, with a wall between, 
for the separate accommodation of the double throng 
of foot-passengers, equestrians, and vehicles of all 
kinds, which was expected to roll and reverberate 
continually through the Tunnel. Only one of them 



278 OUR OLD HOME. 

has ever been opened, and its echoes are but feebly 
awakened by infrequent footfalls. 

Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives 
here, and who probably blink like owls, when, once or 
twice a year, perhaps, they happen to climb into the 
sunshine. All along the corridor, which I believe to 
be a mile in extent, we see stalls or shops in little 
alcoves, kept principally by women ; they were of a ripe 
age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed Eng- 
land of none of its very moderate supply of feminine 
loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like interment. 
As you approach, (and they are so accustomed to the 
dusky gaslight that they read all your characteristics 
afar off,) they assail you with hungry entreaties to buy 
some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the 
Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a 
magnifying-glass at one end to make the vista more 
effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewelry, 
sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, 
and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not much 
heavier cost, together with a multifarious trumpery 
which has died out of the upper world to reappear in 
this Tartarean bazaar. That you may fancy yourself 
still in the realms of the living, they urge you to par- 
take of cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and such small re- 
freshment, more suitable, however, for the shadowy 
appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs of 
Englishmen. The most capacious of the shops con- 
tains a dioramic exhibition of cities and scenes in the 
daylight world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among 
them all ; so that they serve well enough to represent 
the dim, unsatisfactory remembrances that dead people 
might be supposed to retain from their past lives, 
mixing them up with the ghastliness of their unsub- 



UP THE THAMES. 2jg 

stantial state. I dwell the more upon these trifles, 
and do my best to give them a mockery of importance, 
because, if these are nothing, then all this elaborate 
contrivance and mighty piece of work has been 
wrought in vain. The Englishman has burrowed 
under the bed of his great river, and set ships of two 
or three thousand tons a-rolling over his head, only 
to provide new sites for a few old women to sell cakes 
and ginger-beer! 

Yet the conception was a grand one ; and though it 
has proved an absolute failure, swallowing an immen- 
sity of toil and money, with annual returns hardly 
sufficient to keep the pavement free from the ooze of 
subterranean springs, yet it needs, I presume, only an 
expenditure three or four (or, for aught I know, twenty) 
times as large, to make the enterprise brilliantly suc- 
cessful. The descent is so great from the bank of the 
river to its surface, and the Tunnel dips so profoundly 
under the river's bed, that the approaches on either 
side must commence a long way off, in order to render 
the entrance accessible to horsemen or vehicles ; so 
that the larger part of the cost of the whole affair 
should have been expended on its margins. It has 
turned out a sublime piece of folly ; and when the 
New Zealander of distant ages shall have moralized 
sufficiently among the ruins of London Bridge, he will 
bethink himself that somewhere thereabout was the 
marvellous Tunnel, the very existence of which will 
seem to him as incredible as that of the hanging gar- 
dens of Babylon. But the Thames will long ago have 
broken through the massive arch, and choked up the 
corridors with mud and sand and with the large 
stones of the structure itself, intermixed with skeletons 
of drowned people, the rusty iron-work of sunken ves- 



280 OUR OLD HOME. 

sels, and the great many such precious and curious 
things as a river always contrives to hide in its bosom ; 
the entrance will have been obliterated, and its very 
site forgotten beyond the memory of twenty genera- 
tions of men, and the whole neighborhood be held a 
dangerous spot on account of the malaria ; insomuch 
that the traveller will make but a brief and careless inqui- 
sition for the traces of the old wonder, and will stake 
his credit before the public, in some Pacific Monthly 
of that day, that the story of it is but a myth, though 
enriched with a spiritual profundity which he will pro- 
ceed to unfold. 

Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at least, to see so 
much magnificent ingenuity thrown away, without try- 
ing to endow the unfortunate result with some kind of 
usefulness, though perhaps widely different from the 
purpose of its original conception. In former ages, 
the mile-long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, 
might have been utilized as a series of dungeons, the 
fittest of all possible receptacles for prisoners of state. 
Dethroned monarchs and fallen statesmen would not 
have needed to remonstrate against a domicile so 
spacious, so deeply secluded from the world's scorn, 
and so admirably in accordance with their thencefor- 
ward sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have 
suited Sir Walter Raleigh better than that darksome 
hiding-place communicating with the great chamber in 
the Tower, pacing from end to end of which he medi- 
tated upon his " History of the World." His track 
would, here have been straight and narrow, indeed, 
and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the 
freedom that his intellect demanded ; and yet the 
length to which his footsteps might have travelled 
forth and retraced themselves would partly have har- 



UP THE THAMES. 28 1 

monized his physical movement with the grand curves 
and planetary returns of his thought, through cycles of 
majestic periods. Having it in his mind to compose 
the world's history, methinks he could have asked no 
better retirement than such a cloister as this, insulated 
from all the seductions of mankind and womankind, 
deep beneath their mysteries ancj motives, down into 
the heart of things, full of personal reminiscences in 
order to the comprehensive measurement and verifica- 
tion of historic records, seeing into the secrets of 
human nature, — secrets that daylight never yet re- 
vealed to mortal, — but detecting their whole scope 
and purport with the infallible eyes of unbroken soli- 
tude and night. And then the shades of the old 
mighty men might have risen from their still pro- 
founder abodes and joined him in the dim corridor, 
treading beside him with an antique stateliness of 
mien, telling him in melancholy tones, grand, but 
always melancholy, of the greater ideas and purposes 
which their most renowned performances so imper- 
fectly carried out, that, magnificent successes in the 
view of all posterity, they were but failures to those who 
planned them. As Raleigh was a navigator, Noah 
would have explained to him the peculiarities of con- 
struction that made the ark so seaworthy ; as Raleigh 
was a statesman, Moses would have discussed with him 
the principles of laws and government ; as Raleigh 
was a soldier, Caesar and Hannibal would have held 
debate in his presence, with this martial student for 
their umpire ; as Raleigh was a poet, David, or what- 
ever most illustrious bard he might call up, would have 
touched his harp, and made manifest all the true sig- 
nificance of the past by means of song and the subtle 
intelligences of music. 



282 OUR OLD HOME. 

Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Ra- 
leigh's century knew nothing of gaslight, and that it 
would require a prodigious and wasteful expenditure 
of tallow-candles to illuminate the Tunnel sufficiently 
to discern even a ghost. On this account, however, it 
w r ould be all the more suitable place of confinement 
for a metaphysician, to keep him from bewildering 
mankind with his shadowy speculations ; and, being 
shut off from external converse, the dark corridor 
would help him to make rich discoveries in those cav- 
ernous regions and mysterious by-paths of the intel- 
lect, which he had so long accustomed himself to 
explore. But how would every successive age rejoice 
in so secure a habitation for its reformers, and espe- 
cially for each best and wisest man that happened to be 
then alive ! He seeks to burn up our whole system of 
society, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses! 
Away with him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by 
setting the Thames on fire, if he is able ! 

If not precisely these, yet akin to these were some 
of the fantasies that haunted me as I passed under the 
river : for the place is suggestive of such idle and irre- 
sponsible stuff by its own abortive character, its lack 
of whereabout on upper earth, or any solid foundation 
of realities. Could I have looked forward a few years, 
I might have regretted that American enterprise had 
not provided a similar tunnel, under the Hudson or 
the Potomac, for the convenience of our National 
Government in times hardly yet gone by. It would 
be delightful to clap up all the enemies of our peace 
and Union in the dark together, and there let them 
abide, listening to the monotonous roll of the river 
above their heads, or perhaps in a state of miracu- 
lously suspended animation, until, — be it after months, 



UP THE THAMES. 283 

years, or centuries, — when the turmoil shall be all 
over, the Wrong washed away in blood, (since that 
must needs be the cleansing fluid,) and the Right 
firmly rooted in the soil which that blood will have 
enriched, they might crawl forth again and catch a 
single glimpse at their redeemed country, and feel it 
to be a better land than they deserve, and die! 

I was not sorry when the daylight reached me after 
a much briefer abode in the nether regions than, I fear, 
would await the troublesome personages just hinted 
at. Emerging on the Surrey side of the Thames, I 
found myself in Rotherhithe, a neighborhood not 
unfamiliar to the readers of old books of maritime 
adventure. There being a ferry hard by the mouth 
of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the primitive 
fashion of an open boat, which the conflict of wind 
and tide, together with the swash and swell of the 
passing steamers, tossed high and low rather tumultu- 
ously. This inquietude of our frail skiff (which, in- 
deed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so much 
alarmed an old lady, the only other passenger, that 
the boatmen essayed to comfort her. " Never fear, 
mother ! " grumbled one of them, " we'll make the 
river as smooth as we can for you. Well get a plane 
and plane down the waves ! " The joke may not read 
very brilliantly; but I make -bold to record it as the 
only specimen that reached my ears of the old, rough 
water-wit for which the Thames used to be so cele- 
brated. Passing directly along the line of the sunken 
Tunnel, we landed in Wapping, which I should have 
presupposed to be the most tarry and pitchy spot on 
earth, swarming with old salts, and full of warm, 
bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful life. Never- 
theless, it turned out to be a cold and torpid neighbor- 



284 OUR OLD HOME. 

hood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque, both as to its 
buildings and inhabitants : the latter comprising (so 
far as was visible to me) not a single unmistakable 
sailor, though plenty of land-sharks, who get a half 
dishonest livelihood by business connected with the 
sea. Ale and spirit vaults (as petty drinking estab- 
lishments are styled in England, pretending to con- 
tain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of 
ten feet square above ground) were particularly abun- 
dant, together with apples, oranges, and oysters, the 
stalls of fishmongers and butchers, and slop-shops, 
where blue jackets and duck trousers swung and ca- 
pered before the doors. Everything was on the 
poorest scale, and the place bore an aspect of unre- 
deemable decay. From this remote point of London, 
I strolled leisurely towards the heart of the city; 
while the streets, at first but thinly occupied by man 
or vehicle, got more and more thronged with foot- 
passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all-pervading 
and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack cour- 
age, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as the 
gentlest reader would lack patience, to undertake a 
descriptive stroll through London streets ; more 
especially as there would be a volume ready for the 
printer before we could reach a midway resting-place 
at Charing Cross. It will be the easier course to step 
aboard another passing steamer, and continue our 
trip up the Thames. 

The next notable group of objects is an assemblage 
of ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the 
midst of which rises prominently one great square 
tower, of a grayish hue, bordered with white stone, 
and having a small turret at each corner of the roof. 
This central structure is the White Tower, and the 



UP THE THAMES, 285 

whole circuit of ramparts and enclosed edifices con- 
stitutes what is known in English history, and still 
more widely and impressively in English poetry, as 
the Tower. A crowd of river-craft are generally 
moored in front of it ; but if we look sharply at the 
right moment under the base of the rampart, we may 
catch a glimpse of an arched water-entrance, half 
submerged, past which the Thames glides as indif- 
ferently as if it were the mouth of a city-kennel. 
Nevertheless, it is the Traitor's Gate, a dreary kind 
of triumphal passage-way, (now supposed to be shut 
up and barred forever,) through which a multitude of 
noble and illustrious personages have entered the 
Tower, and found it a brief resting-place on their way 
to heaven. Passing it many times, I never observed 
that anybody glanced at this shadowy and ominous 
trap-door, save myself. It is well that America exists, 
if it were only that her vagrant children may be im- 
pressed and affected by the historical monuments of 
England in a degree of which the native inhabitants 
are evidently incapable. These matters are too famil- 
iar, too real, and too hopelessly built in amongst and 
mixed up with the common objects and affairs of life, 
to be easily susceptible of imaginative coloring in their 
minds ; and even their poets and romancers feel it a 
toil, and almost a delusion, to extract poetic material 
out of what seems embodied poetry itself to an Amer- 
ican. An Englishman cares nothing about the Tower, 
which to us is a haunted castle in dreamland. That 
honest and excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. R. 
James, (whose mechanical ability, one might have 
supposed, would nourish itself by devouring every old 
stone of such a structure,) once assured me that he had 
never in his life set eyes upon the Tower, though for 
years an historic novelist in London. 



286 OUR OLD HOME. 

Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voy- 
age, we will suppose ourselves to have reached Lon- 
don Bridge, and thence to have taken another steamer 
for a farther passage up the river. But here the mem- 
orable objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can 
spare but a single sentence even for the great Dome, 
though I deem it more picturesque, in that dusky 
atmosphere, than St. Peter's in its clear blue sky. I 
must mention, however, (since everything connected 
with royalty is especially interesting to my dear coun- 
trymen,) that I once saw a large and beautiful barge, 
splendidly gilded and ornamented, and overspread 
with a rich covering, lying at the pier nearest to St. 
Paul's Cathedral ; it had the royal banner of Great 
Britain displayed, besides being decorated with a 
number of other flags ; and many footmen (who are 
universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be 
seen in England at this day, and these were regal 
ones, in a bright scarlet livery bedizened with gold 
lace, and white silk stockings) were in attendance. I 
know not what festive or ceremonial occasion may 
have drawn out this pageant ; after all, it might have 
been merely a city-spectacle, appertaining to the Lord 
Mayor ; but the sight had its value in bringing vividly 
before me the grand old times when the sovereign and 
nobles were accustomed to use the Thames as the 
high street of the metropolis, and join in pompous 
processions upon it ; whereas, the desuetude of such 
customs, nowadays, has caused the whole show of 
river-life to consist in a multitude of smoke-begrimed 
steamers. An analogous change has taken place in 
the streets, where cabs and the omnibus have crowded 
out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus life gets more 
monotonous in hue from age to age, and appears to 



UP THE THAMES. 28 J 

seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of its gold 
lace among the wealthier classes, and to make itself 
decent in the lower ones. 

Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now 
wearing as decorous a face as any other portion of Lon- 
don ; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick squares 
of the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon 
the riverside, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, 
where the partisans of York and Lancaster plucked 
the fatal roses, and scattered their pale and bloody 
petals over so many English battlefields. Hard by, 
we see the long white front or rear of Somerset House, 
and, farther on, rise the two new Houses of Parlia- 
ment, with a huge unfinished tower already hiding its 
imperfect summit in the smoky canopy, — the whole 
vast and cumbrous edifice a specimen of the best that 
modern architecture can effect, elaborately imitating 
the masterpieces of those simple ages when men 
" builded better than they knew." Close by it, we 
have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the 
holy Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral pile on the 
opposite side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a vener- 
able group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, 
but with at least one large tower of stone. In our 
course, we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges, 
and, emerging out of the black heart of London, shall 
soon reach a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames, 
if I remember, begins to put on an aspect of unpol- 
luted innocence. And now we look back upon the 
mass of innumerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, 
towers, columns, and the great crowning Dome, — 
look back, in short, upon that mystery of the world's 
proudest city, amid which a man so longs and loves 
to be : not, perhaps, because it contains much that is 



288 OUR OLD HOME. 

positively admirable and enjoyable, but because, at all 
events, the world has nothing better. The cream of 
external life is there ; and whatever merely intellec- 
tual or material good we fail to find perfect in London, 
we may as well content ourselves to seek that unat- 
tainable thing no farther on this earth. 

The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old 
town endowed with a prodigious number of pot- 
houses, and some famous gardens, called the Cre- 
morne, for public amusement. The most noticeable 
thing, however, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like that 
of Greenwich, was founded, I believe, by Charles II., 
(whose bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman, 
stands in the centre of the quadrangle,) and appro- 
priated as a home for aged and infirm soldiers of the 
British army. The edifices are of three stories with 
windows in the high roofs, and are built of dark, 
sombre brick, with stone edgings and facings. The 
effect is by no means that of grandeur, (which is some- 
what disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich Hospi- 
tal,) but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each 
extremity of the street-front there is a spacious and 
hospitably open gateway, lounging about which I 
saw some gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an 
antique fashion, and the cocked hats of a century ago, 
or occasionally a modern foraging-cap. Almost all 
of them moved with a rheumatic gait, two or three 
stumped on wooden legs, and here and there an arm 
was missing. Inquiring of one of these fragmentary 
heroes whether a stranger could be admitted to see the 
establishment, he replied most cordially, " O yes, Sir, 
— anywhere ! Walk in and go where you please, — 
up-stairs, or anywhere !" So I entered, and, passing 
along the inner side of the quadrangle, came to the 



UP THE THAMES. 289 

door of the chapel, which forms a part of the contigu- 
ity of edifices next the street. Here another pensioner, 
an old warrior of exceedingly peaceable and Christian 
demeanor, touched his three-cornered hat and asked 
if I wished to see the interior ; to which I assenting, 
he unlocked the door, and we went in. 

The chapel consists of a great hall with vaulted roof, 
and over the altar is a large painting in fresco, the 
subject of which I did not trouble myself to make out. 
More appropriate adornments of the place, dedicated 
as well to martial reminiscences as religious worship, 
are the long ranges of dusty and tattered banners that 
hang from their staves all round the ceiling of the 
chapel. They are trophies of battles fought and won 
in every quarter of the world, comprising the captured 
flags of all the nations with whom the British lion has 
waged war since James II.'s time, — French, Dutch, 
East Indian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and Ameri- 
can, — collected together in this consecrated spot, not 
to symbolize that there shall be no more discord upon 
earth, but drooping over the aisle in sullen, though 
peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said "American" 
among the rest ; for the good old pensioner mistook 
me for an Englishman, and failed not to point out 
(and, methought, with an especial emphasis of triumph) 
some flags that had been taken at Bladensburg and 
Washington. I fancied, indeed, that they hung a 
little higher and drooped a little lower than any of their 
companions in disgrace. It is a comfort, however, that 
their proud devices are already indistinguishable, or 
nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the kind offices 
of the moths, and that they will soon rot from the 
banner-staves and be swept out in unrecognized frag- 
ments from the chapel-door. 



29O OUR OLD HOME. 

It is a good method of teaching a man how imper- 
fectly cosmopolitan he is, to show him his country's 
flag occupying a position of dishonor in a foreign land. 
But, in truth, the whole system of a people crowing 
over its military triumphs had far better be dispensed 
with, both on account of the ill-blood that it helps to 
keep fermenting among the nations, and because it 
operates as an accumulative inducement to future 
generations to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of 
which has generally proved more ruinous than its loss. 
I heartily wish that every trophy of victory might 
crumble away, and that every reminiscence or tradition 
of a hero, from the beginning of the world to this day, 
could pass out of all men's memories at once and for- 
ever. I might feel very differently, to be sure, if we 
Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose 
by the fading of those illuminated names. 

I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may 
have been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon 
of all the silver I had in my pocket, to requite him for 
having unintentionally stirred up my patriotic suscep- 
tibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, 
with a humble freedom and affability of manner that 
made it pleasant to converse with him. Old soldiers, 
I know not why, seem to be more accostable than old 
sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath the 
smoothest courtesy of the latter. The mild veteran, 
with his peaceful voice, and gentle, reverend aspect, 
told me that he had fought at a cannon all through 
the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt ; he had 
now been in the hospital four or five years, and was 
married, but necessarily underwent a separation from 
his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my in- 
quiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable 



UP THE THAMES. 29 1 

and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, " O yes, 
Sir!" qualifying his evidence, after a moment's con- 
sideration, by saying, in an undertone, " There are 
some people, your Honor knows, who could not be 
comfortable anywhere. 11 I did know it, and fear that 
the system of Chelsea Hospital allows too little of 
that wholesome care and regulation of their own 
occupations and interests which might assuage the 
sting of life to those naturally uncomfortable individ- 
uals by giving them something external to think 
about. But my old friend here was happy in the 
hospital, and by this time, very likely, is happy in 
heaven, in spite of the bloodshed that he may have 
caused by touching off a cannon at Waterloo. 

Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of 
Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the Crys- 
tal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine 
like an imaginary structure, — an air-castle by chance 
descended upon earth, and resting there one instant 
before it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap-bubble 
touch unharmed on the carpet, — a thing of only mo- 
mentary visibility and no substance, destined to be 
overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud- 
shadow that might fall upon that spot. Even as I 
looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt a picture of 
this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else shall 
I try to paint ? Everything in London and its vicin- 
ity has been depicted innumerable times, but never 
once translated into intelligible images ; it is an "old, 
old story, 11 never yet told, nor to be told. While writ- 
ing these reminiscences, I am continually impressed 
with the futility of the effort to give any creative truth 
to my sketch, so that it might produce such pictures 
in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes 



292 OUR OLD HOME. 

to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have 
other writers often been more successful in represent- 
ing definite objects prophetically to my own mind. In 
truth, I believe that the chief delight and advantage 
of this kind of literature is not for any real information 
that it supplies to untravelled people, but for reviving 
the recollections and reawakening the emotions of 
persons already acquainted with the scenes described. 
Thus I found an exquisite pleasure, the other day, in 
reading Mr. Tuckerman's "Month in England/ 1 — a 
fine example of the way in which a refined and cul- 
tivated American looks at the Old Country, the things 
that he naturally seeks there, and the modes of feeling 
and reflection which they excite. Correct outlines 
avail little or nothing, though truth of coloring may 
be somewhat more efficacious. Impressions, how- 
ever, states of mind produced by interesting and 
remarkable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly 
recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, though but 
the result of what we see, go farther towards repre- 
senting the actual scene than any direct effort to paint 
it. Give the emotions that cluster about it, and, with- 
out being able to analyze the spell by which it is sum- 
moned up, you get something like a simulachre of the 
object in the midst of them. From some of the above 
reflections I draw the comfortable inference, that, the 
longer and better known a thing may be, so much 
the more eligible is it as the subject of a descriptive 
sketch. 

On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side- 
entrance in the time-blackened wall of a place of 
worship, and found myself among a congregation as- 
sembled in one of the transepts and the immediately 
contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edi- 



UP THE THAMES. 293 

fice, spacious enough, within the extent covered by its 
pillared roof and overspread by its stone pavement, to 
accommodate the whole of church-going London, and 
with a far wider and loftier concave than any human 
power of lungs could fill with audible prayer. Oaken 
benches were arranged in the transept, on one of which 
I seated myself, and joined, as well as I knew how, in 
the sacred business that was going forward. But when 
it came to the sermon, the voice of the preacher was 
puny, and so were his thoughts, and both seemed im- 
pertinent at such a time and place, where he and all 
of us were bodily included within a sublime act of re- 
ligion, which could be seen above and around us and 
felt beneath our feet. The structure itself was the 
worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously 
preserved in stone without losing an atom of its fra- 
grance and fervor ; it was a kind of anthem-strain 
that they had sung and poured out of the organ in 
centuries gone by'; and being so grand and sweet, 
the Divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged 
for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came 
to the conclusion, that, in my individual case, it would 
be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander 
about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts 
on the evidently uninspired mortal who was venturing 
— and felt it no venture at all — to speak here above 
his breath. 

The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader 
recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is 
built of rich brown stone; and the whole of it — the 
lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed 
arches — appears to be in consummate repair. At all 
points where decay has laid its finger, the structure is 
clamped with iron, or otherwise carefully protected ; 



294 0UR 0LD HOME. 

and being thus watched over, — whether as a place 
of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, 
or an object of national interest and pride, — it may 
reasonably be expected to survive for as many ages 
as have passed over it already. It was sweet to feel 
its venerable quietude, its long-enduring peace, and 
yet to observe how kindly and even cheerfully it re- 
ceived the sunshine of to-day, which fell from the 
great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that 
laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome 
it. Sunshine always seems friendly to old abbeys, 
churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were, with a 
more affectionate, though still reverential familiarity, 
than it accords to edifices of later date. A square of 
golden light lay on the sombre pavement of the nave, 
afar off, falling through the grand western entrance, the 
folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded 
glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer 
world, while we sat dimly enveloped in the solemnity 
of antique devotion. In the south transept, separated 
from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were 
painted glass windows, of which the uppermost ap- 
peared to be a great orb of many-colored radiance, 
being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels whose 
glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole ema- 
nating from a cross in the midst. These windows 
are modern, but combine softness with wonderful bril- 
liancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw 
that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were 
almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yellow 
with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of 
such men as their respective generations deemed wis- 
est and bravest. Some of them were commemorated 
merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by 



UP THE THAMES. 



295 



sculptured bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but now 
forgotten generals or admirals, riiese) by ponderous 
tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, or 
partly curtained the immense arch of a window. These 
mountains of marble were peopled with the sisterhood 
of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic figures in 
full-bottomed wigs ; but it was strange to observe how 
the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the 
breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself 
by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Me- 
thinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower 
the ridiculous without deigning to hide it ; and these 
grotesque monuments of the last century answer a 
similar purpose with the grinning faces which the 
old architects scattered among their most solemn 
conceptions. 

From these distant wanderings, (it was my first visit 
to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have taken 
it all in at a glance,) my eyes came back and began to 
investigate what was immediately about me in the 
transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Can- 
ning's statue. Next beyond it was a massive tomb, on 
the spacious tablet of which reposed the full-length 
figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an inscription 
announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, 
— the historic Duke of Charles I.'s time and the fan- 
tastic Duchess, traditionally remembered by her poems 
and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her 
tomb proudly informed us, of which all the brothers 
had been valiant and all the sisters virtuous. A recent 
statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new marble as white 
as snow, held the next place ; and near by was a mural 
monument and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round 
visage of this old British admiral has a certain interest 



296 OUR OLD HOME. 

for a New Englander, because it was by no merit of 
his own, (though he took care to assume it as such,) 
but by the valor and warlike enterprise of our colonial 
forefathers, especially the stout men of Massachusetts, 
that he won rank and renown, and a tomb in West- 
minster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge mass of 
marble done into the guise of a judicial gown and 
wig, with a stern face in the midst of the latter, sat on 
the other side of the transept ; and on the pedestal 
beside him was a figure of Justice, holding forth, in- 
stead of the customary grocer's scales, an actual pair 
of brass steelyards. It is an ancient and classic instru- 
ment, undoubtedly ; but I had supposed that Portia 
(when Shylock's pound of flesh was to be weighed) was 
the only judge that ever really called for it in a court of 
justice. Pitt and Fox were in the same distinguished 
company ; and John Kemble, in Roman costume, stood 
not far off, but strangely shorn of the dignity that is 
said to have enveloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. 
Perhaps the evanescent majesty of the stage is incom- 
patible with the long endurance of marble and the sol- 
emn reality of the tomb ; though, on the other hand, 
almost every illustrious personage here represented has 
been invested with more or less of stage-trickery by his 
sculptor. In truth, the artist (unless there be a divine 
efficacy in his touch, making evident a heretofore hidden 
dignity in the actual form) feels it an imperious law to 
remove his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary 
life as may be possible without sacrificing every trace 
of resemblance. The absurd effect of the contrary 
course is very remarkable in the statue of Mr. Wil- 
berforce, whose actual self, save for the lack of 
color, I seemed to behold, seated just across the 
aisle. 



UP THE THAMES. 297 

This excellent man appears to have sunk into him- 
self in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over 
his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other 
under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his 
nose, or to some equally familiar purpose ; while his 
exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on 
one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest compla- 
cency, as if he were looking right into your eyes, and 
twigged something there which you had half a mind to 
conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertina- 
ciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, 
and bethink yourself what common ground there may 
be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you 
to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue is as like 
Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might 
fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he least 
expected it, and before he had time to smooth away 
his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the 
Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble, — not only 
his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down 
to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The 
ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing 
the age-long duration of marble upon small, charac- 
teristic individualities, such as might come within the 
province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give 
permanence to the figure of a great man in his mood 
of broad and grand composure, which would obliterate 
all mean peculiarities ; for, if the original were unac- 
customed to such a mood, or if his features were inca- 
pable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable 
whether he could really have been entitled to a marble 
immortality. In point of fact, however, the English 
face and form are seldom statuesque, however illus- 
trious the individual. 



298 OUR OLD HOME. 

It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this 
mood of half-jocose criticism in describing my first visit 
to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed 
about more reverentially, from my childhood upward, 
than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, 
and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to 
the men who built it, and a kindly interest, I may add, 
in the humblest personage that has contributed his 
little all to its impressiveness, by depositing his dust 
or his memory there. But it is a characteristic of this 
grand edifice that it permits you to smile as freely 
under the roof of its central nave as if you stood 
beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break 
into laughter, if you feel inclined, provided the vergers 
do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an ordi- 
nary church you would keep your countenance for fear 
disturbing the sanctities or proprieties of the place; 
but you need leave no honest and decorous portion of 
your human nature outside of these benign and truly 
hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take care 
of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general impres- 
sion, when you come to be sensible that many of the 
monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a mob 
of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, 
and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from 
posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey 
Kneller's objection to being buried in Westminster 
Abbey, because " they do bury fools there ! " Never- 
theless, these grotesque carvings of marble, that break 
out in dingy-white blotches on the old freestone of 
the interior walls, have come there by as natural a 
process as might cause mosses and ivy to cluster 
about the external edifice ; for they are the historical 
and biographical record of each successive age, written 



UP THE THAMES. 299 

with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable 
mistakes, and none the less solemn for the occasional 
absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting 
to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you are con- 
tent at last to read many names, both in literature and 
history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind, 
if indeed they ever really possessed it. Let these men 
rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two that 
you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. It 
matters little a few more or less, or whether West- 
minster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, 
so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of 
personages that it deemed memorable, have chosen 
it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid them- 
selves down under its pavement. The inscriptions 
and devices on the walls are rich with evidences of the 
fluctuating tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, preju- 
dices, follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they 
combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead 
times than any individual epitaph-maker ever meant 
to write. 

When the services were over, many of the audience 
seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away 
among the mysterious aisles ; for there is nothing in 
this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which al- 
ways invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by 
vast revelations and shadowy concealments. Through 
the open-work screen that divides the nave from the 
chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam of a 
marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance 
into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by the 
vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty 
all the more strenuously because no fees could be ex- 
acted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, 



300 OUR OLD HOME. 

and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock 
of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I hap- 
pened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone 
inscribed with this familiar exclamation, " O rare Ben 
Jonson ! " and remembered the story of stout old 
Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright, — not, I 
presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on 
his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but 
because standing-room was all that could reasonably 
be demanded for a poet among the slumberous nota- 
bilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it! 
— such a prodigious length of time to keep one's 
feet ! — apart from the honor of the thing, it would 
certainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself 
at ease in some country-churchyard. To this day, 
however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy 
mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes 
of English society profess for their literary men. 

Another day — in truth, many other days — I sought 
out Poets' Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed 
finger, directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of 
a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. The 
entrance is at the southeastern end of the south tran- 
sept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only 
free mode of access to the building. It is no spacious 
arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through which, 
and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out 
an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim 
nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at 
you from the otherwise bare stonework of the walls. 
Great poets, too ; for Ben Jonson is right behind the 
door, and Spenser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the 
same side of the transept, and Milton's (whose bust you 
know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits. 



UP THE THAMES. 301 

though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that) 
is close by, and a profile-medallion of Gray beneath it. 
A window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on 
these and many other sculptured marbles, now as yel- 
low as old parchment, that cover the three walls of the 
nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above 
the pavement. It seemed to me that I had always 
been familiar with the spot. Enjoying a humble inti- 
macy — and how much of my life had else been a 
dreary solitude! — with many of its inhabitants, I 
could not feel myself a stranger there. It was de- 
lightful to be among them. There was a genial awe, 
mingled with a sense of kind and friendly presences 
about me; and I was glad, moreover, at finding so 
many of them there together, in fit companionship, 
mutually recognized and duly honored, all reconciled 
now, whatever distant generations, whatever personal 
hostility or other miserable impediment, had divided 
them far asunder while they lived. I have never felt 
a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor have I 
ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of 
other famous dead people. A poet's ghost is the only 
one that survives for his fellow-mortals, after his bones 
are in the dust, — and he not ghostly, but cherishing 
many hearts with his own warmth in the chillest at- 
mosphere of life. What other fame is worth aspiring 
for? Or, let me speak it more boldly, what other 
long-enduring fame can exist? We neither remem- 
ber nor care anything for the past, except as the poet 
has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our 
comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no 
substance ; they flit ineffectually about the darkened 
stage where they performed their momentary parts, 
save when the poet has thrown his own creative soul 



302 OUR OLD HOME. 

into them, and imparted a more vivid life than ever 
they were able to manifest to mankind while they 
dwelt in the body. And therefore — though he cun- 
ningly disguises himself in their armor, their robes of 
state, or kingly purple — it is not the statesman, the 
warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised 
poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, 
and to whom they owe all that they now are or have, 
— a name ! 

In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been be- 
trayed into a flight above or beyond the customary 
level that best agrees with me ; but it represents 
fairly enough the emotions through which I passed 
from Poets 1 Corner into the chapels, which contain 
the sepulchres of kings and great people. They are 
magnificent even now, and must have been inconceiv- 
ably so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their 
new polish, and the statues retained the brilliant 
colors with which they were originally painted, and 
the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight 
still shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam 
itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet this 
recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memo- 
rials of personages whom we care to remember. The 
shrine of Edward the Confessor has a certain interest, 
because it was so long held in religious reverence, 
and because the very dust that settled upon it was 
formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of 
Henry V., worn at Agincourt, and now suspended 
above his tomb, are memorable objects, but more for 
Shakspeare's sake than the victor's own. Rank 
has been the general passport to admission here. 
Noble and regal dust is as cheap as dirt under the 
pavement. I am glad to recollect, indeed, (and it is 



UP THE THAMES. 303 

too characteristic of the right English spirit not to be 
mentioned,) one or two gigantic statues of great 
mechanicians, who contributed largely to the material 
welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their marble 
chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Other- 
wise, the quaintness of the earlier monuments, and 
the antique beauty of some of them, are what chiefly 
gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried 
among the men of rank ; not on the plea of his liter- 
ary fame, however, but because he was connected 
with nobility by marriage, and had been a Secretary of 
State. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding 
verse from TickelPs lines to his memory, the only 
lines by which Tickell himself is now remembered, 
and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he 
mainly niched from an obscure versifier of somewhat 
earlier date. 

Returning to Poets 1 Corner, I looked again at the 
walls, and wondered how the requisite hospitality can 
be shown to poets of our own and the succeeding 
ages. There is hardly a foot of space left, although 
room has lately been found for a bust of Southey and 
a full-length statue of Campbell. At best, only a little 
portion of the Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary 
men, musical composers, and others of the gentle 
artist breed, and even into that small nook of sanctity 
men of other pursuits have thought it decent to in- 
trude themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being 
at home here, should recollect how they were treated 
in their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking 
askance at nobles and official personages, however wor- 
thy of honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows 
aptly and truly enough what portion of the world's re- 
gard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary 



304 OUR OLD HOME. 

eminence in comparison with other modes of great- 
ness, — this dimly lighted corner (nor even that 
quietly to themselves) in the vast minster, the walls 
of which are sheathed and hidden under marble that 
has been wasted upon the illustrious obscure. Never- 
theless, it may not be worth while to quarrel with the 
world on this account ; for, to confess the very 
truth, their own little nook contains more than one 
poet whose memory is kept alive by his monument, 
instead of imbuing the senseless stone with a spiritual 
immortality, — men of whom you do not ask, " Where 
is he ? " but " Why is he here ? " I estimate that all 
the literary people who really make an essential part 
of one's inner life, including the period since English 
literature first existed, might have ample elbow-room 
to sit down and quaff their draughts of Castaly round 
Chaucer's broad, horizontal tombstone. These di- 
vinest poets consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected 
glory over the humblest of their companions. And 
as for the latter, it is to be hoped that they may have 
long outgrown the characteristic jealousies and morbid 
sensibilities of their craft, and have found out the 
little value (probably not amounting to sixpence in 
immortal currency) of the posthumous renown which 
they once aspired to win. It would be a poor com- 
pliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning out of 
the sky and snuffing up the impure breath of earthly 
praise. 

Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion 
that those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of 
an undying song would fain be conscious of its end- 
less reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and 
would delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see 
their names emblazoned in such a treasure-place of 



UP THE THAMES. 305 

great memories as Westminster Abbey. There are 
some men, at all events, — true and tender poets, 
moreover, fully deserving of the honor, — whose spirits, 
I feel certain, would linger a little while about Poets 1 
Corner for the sake of witnessing their own apotheosis 
among their kindred. They have had a strong natural 
yearning, not so much for applause as sympathy, 
which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but scantily 
supply ; so that this unsatisfied appetite may make it- 
self felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and re- 
tentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. Leigh 
Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, if he 
could learn that his bust had been reposited in the 
midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved ; 
though there is hardly a man among the authors of 
to-day and yesterday whom the judgment of English- 
men would be less likely to place there. He deserves 
it, however, if not for his verse, (the value of which I 
do not estimate, never having been able to read it,) 
yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured poetry, 
the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working soft 
miracles by a life-process like the growth of grass and 
flowers. As with all such gentle writers, his page some- 
times betrayed a vestige of affectation, but, the next mo- 
ment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and buried it 
out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven 
be praised, few English celebrities whom I chanced to 
meet have enfranchised my pen by their decease, and 
as I assume no liberties with living men) I will con- 
clude this rambling article by sketching my first 
interview with Leigh Hunt. 

He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very 
plain and shabby little house in a contiguous range 
of others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly 



3<d6 our old home. 

village street, and certainly nothing to gratify his 
craving for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A 
slatternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he 
himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable 
old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, 
tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all 
over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous 
manner. He ushered us into his little study, or par- 
lor, or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor paper- 
hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I 
remember, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch 
distinctly upon these external blemishes and this nudity 
of adornment, not that they would be worth mention- 
ing in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because 
Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty of enjoying 
all beautiful things that it seemed as if Fortune did 
him as much wrong in not supplying them as in with- 
holding a sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary 
men. All kinds of mild magnificence, tempered by 
his taste, would have become him well ; but he had 
not the grim dignity that assumes nakedness as the 
better robe. 

I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In 
truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to the 
mould of features or the expression, nor any that 
showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the 
slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child's 
face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, 
when he met us in the entry, I discerned that he was 
old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles many ; 
it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at 
all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books 
talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. 
But when he began to speak, and as he grew more 



UP THE THAMES. 7>°7 

earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of 
his age ; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened 
through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts diffused 
about his face, but then another flash of youth came 
out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never 
witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, 
before or since ; and, to this day, trusting only to my 
recollection, I should find it difficult to decide which 
was his genuine and stable predicament, — youth or 
age. I have met no Englishman whose manners 
seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than pol- 
ished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a 
kindly and sensitive disposition without any reference 
to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile 
that the nicest observer could not detect the applica- 
tion of it. 

His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful 
voice accompanied their visible language like music. 
He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of what- 
ever was passing among those who surrounded him, 
and especially of the vicissitudes in the consciousness, 
of the person to whom he happened to be addressing 
himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon my 
mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transi- 
tory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from 
any positive vigilance on his part, but because his 
faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate ; 
and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern 
always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any 
slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir 
of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a 
similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feel- 
ing, and within a certain depth, you might spare your- 
self the trouble of utterance, because he already knew 



308 OUR OLD HOME. 

what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little more 
than you would have spoken. His figure was full of 
gentle movement, though, somehow, without disturb- 
ing its quietude ; and as he talked, he kept folding his 
hands nervously, and betokened in many ways a fine 
and immediate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or 
pain, though scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a 
passionate experience in either direction. There was 
not an English trait in him from head to foot, morally, 
intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale, or stout, brandy, 
or port-wine, entered not at all into his composition. 
In his earlier life, he appears to have given evidences 
of courage and sturdy principle, and of a tendency to 
fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on 
the liberal side. It would be taking too much upon 
myself to affirm that this was merely a projection of 
his fancy world into the actual, and that he never 
could have hit a downright blow, and was altogether 
an unsuitable person to receive one. I beheld him 
not in his armor, but in his peacefulest robes. Never- 
theless, drawing my conclusion merely from what I 
'saw, it would have occurred to me that his main defi- 
ciency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a 
timid man, the combative and defensive elements were 
not prominently developed in his character, and could 
have been made available only when he put an un- 
natural force upon his instincts. It was on this 
account, and also because of the fineness of his nature 
generally, that the English appreciated him no better, 
and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with 
scanty laurels in his declining age. 

It was not, I think, from his American blood that 
Leigh Hunt derived either his amiability or his peace- 
ful inclinations ; at least, I do not see how we can 



UP THE THAMES. 309 

reasonably claim the former quality as a national 
characteristic, though the latter might have been 
fairly inherited from his ancestors on the mother's 
side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But the kind 
of excellence that distinguished him — his fineness, 
subtilty, and grace — was that which the richest cul- 
tivation has heretofore tended to develop in the hap- 
pier examples of American genius, and which (though 
I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our future 
intellectual advancement may make general among us. 
His person, at all events, was thoroughly American, 
and of the best type, as were likewise his manners ; 
for we are the best as well as the worst mannered 
people in the world. 

Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to 
say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, 
and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth 
of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In response 
to all that we ventured to express about his writings, 
(and, for my part, I went quite to the extent of my 
conscience, which was a long way, and there left the 
matter to 'a lady and a young girl, who happily were 
with me,) his face shone, and he manifested great 
delight, with a perfect, and yet delicate, frankness for 
which I loved him. He could not tell us, he said, the 
happiness that such appreciation gave him ; it always 
took him by surprise, he remarked, for — perhaps be- 
cause he cleaned his own boots, and performed other 
little ordinary offices for himself — he never had been 
conscious of anything wonderful in his own person. 
And then he smiled, making himself and all the poor 
little parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usu- 
ally the hardest thing in the world to praise a man to 
his face ; but Leigh Hunt received the incense with 



3IO OUR OLD HOME. 

such gracious satisfaction, (feeling it to be sympathy, 
not vulgar praise.) that the only difficulty was to keep 
the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of per- 
manent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while 
we were talking ; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, 
and the thunder broke ; but I hope, and have great 
pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for 
Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice 
that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those 
of my companions. Women are the fit ministers at 
such a shrine. 

He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and 
enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon 
the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for 
everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful tempera- 
ment, happiness had probably the upperhand. His 
was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet 
seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results 
from power ; for beauty, like woman, its human repre- 
sentative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its con- 
summate favor only to the strong. I imagine that 
Leigh Hunt may have been more beautiful when I 
met him, both in person and character, than in his 
earlier days. As a young man, I could conceive of 
his being finical in certain moods, but not now, when 
the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. 
I rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with 
most confident and cheering anticipations in respect 
to a future life ; and there were abundant proofs, 
throughout our interview, of an unrepining spirit, 
resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly bene- 
fits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of what- 
ever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining 
onward into the dusk, — all of which gave a reveren- 



UP THE THAMES. 311 

tial cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. 
I wish that he could have had one full draught of pros- 
perity before he died. As a matter of artistic propri- 
ety, it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting 
a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with 
all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegances 
about him, and a succession of tender and lovely women 
to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night. I 
hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of a 
weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that I should be 
sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the same 
time, I sincerely believe that he has found an infinity 
of better things in the world whither he has gone. 

At our leave-taking, he grasped me warmly by both 
hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole 
party as if he had known us for years. All this was 
genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his 
heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and 
rare varieties, not acorns, but a true heart, neverthe- 
less. Several years afterwards I met him for the last 
time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken 
down by infirmities ; and my final recollection of the 
beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, 
if I mistake not, partly embraced and supported by, 
another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel- 
name, since he has a week-day one for his personal 
occasions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Corn- 
wall, whose kind introduction had first made me known 
to Leigh Hunt. 



312 OUR OLD HOME. 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH 
POVERTY. 

Becoming an inhabitant of a great English town, I 
often turned aside from the prosperous thoroughfares, 
(where the edifices, the shops, and the bustling crowd 
differed not so much from scenes with which I was 
familiar in my own country,) and went designedly 
astray among precincts that reminded me of some of 
Dickens's grimiest pages. There I caught glimpses 
of a people and a mode of life that were compara- 
tively new to my observation, a sort of sombre 
phantasmagoric spectacle, exceedingly undelightful 
to behold, yet involving a singular interest and even 
fascination in its ugliness. 

Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the 
world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul 
incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all 
earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ; 
ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have 
chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing 
struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty- 
stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on 
our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its 
own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond 
them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the bright- 
ness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything 
clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger 
portion of our impurities into transitory dust which 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 313 

the next wind can sweep away, in contrast with the 
damp, adhesive grime that incorporates itself with all 
surfaces (unless continually and painfully cleansed) 
in the chill moisture of the English air. Then the 
all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly inter- 
mingled with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous 
coal, hovering overhead, descending, and alighting 
on pavements and rich architectural fronts, on the 
snowy muslin of the ladies, and the gentlemen's 
starched collars and shirt-bosoms, invests even the 
better streets in a half-mourning garb. It is beyond 
the resources of Wealth to keep the smut away from 
its premises or its own fingers 1 ends ; and as for Pov- 
erty ; it surrenders itself to the dark influence without 
a struggle. Along with disastrous circumstances, 
pinching need, adversity so lengthened out as to con- 
stitute the rule of life, there comes a certain chill de- 
pression of the spirits which seems especially to shudder 
at cold water. In view of so wretched a state of things, 
we accept the ancient Deluge not merely as an insulated 
phenomenon, but as a periodical necessity, and acknowl- 
edge that nothing less than such a general washing-day 
could suffice to cleanse the slovenly old world of its 
moral and material dirt. 

Gin-shops, or what the English call spirit-vaults, are 
numerous in the vicinity of these poor streets and are 
set off with the magnificence of gilded door-posts, 
tarnished by contact with the unclean customers who 
haunt there. Ragged children come thither with old 
shaving-mugs, or broken-nosed teapots, or any such 
make-shift receptacle, to get a little poison or madness 
for their parents, who deserve no better requital at 
their hands for having engendered them. Inconceiv- 
ably sluttish women enter at noon-day and stand at 



314 OUR OLD HOME. 

the counter among boon companions of both sexes, 
stirring up misery and jollity in a bumper together, 
and quaffing off the mixture with a relish. As 
for the men, they lounge there continually, drinking 
till they are drunken, — drinking as long as they 
have a half-penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, 
waiting for a sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their 
pockets, so as to enable them to be drunken again. 
Most of these establishments have a significant adver- 
tisement of " Beds," doubtless for the accommodation 
of their customers in the interval between one intoxi- 
cation and the next. I never could find it in my heart 
however, utterly to condemn these sad revellers, and 
should certainly wait till I had some better consolation 
to offer before depriving them of their dram of gin, 
though death itself were in the glass ; for methought 
their poor souls need such fiery stimulant to lift them 
a little way out of the smothering squalor of both their 
outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and 
suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual 
existence that limited their present misery. The tem- 
perance reformers unquestionably derive their com- 
mission from the Divine Beneficence, but have never 
been taken fully into its counsels. All may not be 
lost, though those good men fail. 

Pawnbrokers' establishments, distinguished by the 
mystic symbol of the three golden balls, were conven- 
iently accessible ; though what personal property these 
wretched people could possess, capable of being esti- 
mated in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for a 
loan, was a problem that still perplexes me. Old- 
clothes men, likewise, dwelt hard by, and hung out 
ancient garments to dangle in the wind. There were 
butchers 1 shops, too, of a class adapted to the neigh- 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 315 

borhood, presenting no such generously fattened car- 
casses as Englishmen love to gaze at in the market, 
no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, no dead hogs 
or muttons ornamented with carved bas-reliefs of fat 
on their ribs and shoulders, in a peculiarly British 
style of art, — not these, but bits and gobbets of lean 
meat, selvages snipt off from steaks, tough and stringy 
morsels, bare bones smitten away from joints by the 
cleaver, tripe, liver, bullocks' feet, or whatever else 
was cheapest and divisible into the smallest lots. I 
am afraid that even such delicacies came to many of 
their tables hardly oftener than Christmas. In the 
windows of other little shops you saw half a dozen 
wizened herrings, some eggs in a basket, looking so 
dingily antique that your imagination smelt them, fly- 
speckled biscuits, segments of a hungry cheese, pipes 
and papers of tobacco. Now and then a sturdy milk- 
woman passed by with a wooden yoke over her 
shoulders, supporting a pail on either side, filled with 
a whitish fluid, the composition of which was water 
and chalk and the milk of a sickly cow, who gave the 
best she had, poor thing ! but could scarcely make it 
rich or wholesome, spending her life in some close 
city -nook and pasturing on strange food. I have seen, 
once or twice, a donkey coming into one of these 
streets with panniers full of vegetables, and departing 
with a return cargo of what looked like rubbish and 
street-sweepings. No other commerce seemed to 
exist, except, possibly, a girl might offer you a pair of 
stockings or a worked collar, or a man whisper some- 
thing mysterious about wonderfully cheap cigars. 
And yet I remember seeing female hucksters in those 
regions, with their wares on the edge of the sidewalk 
and their own seats right in the carriage-way, pretend- 



316 OUR OLD HOME. 

ing to sell half-decayed oranges and apples, toffy, 
Ormskirk cakes, combs and cheap jewelry, the coarsest 
kind of crockery, and little plates of oysters, — knit- 
ting patiently all day long, and removing their undi- 
minished stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable 
importations from other quarters of the town were on 
a remarkably diminutive scale : for example, the 
wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the 
wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck- 
measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, 
when an overladen coal-cart happened to pass through 
the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in 
the mud, to see half a dozen women and children 
scrambling for the treasure-trove, like a flock of hens 
and chickens gobbling up some spilt corn. In this 
connection I may as well mention a commodity of 
boiled snails (for such they appeared to me, though 
probably a marine production) which used to be 
peddled from door to door, piping hot, as an article of 
cheap nutriment. 

The population of these dismal abodes appeared to 
consider the sidewalks and middle of the street as 
their common hall. In a drama of low life, the unity 
of place might be arranged rigidly according to the 
classic rule, and the street be the one locality in 
which every scene and incident should occur. Court 
ship, quarrels, plot and counterplot, conspiracies foi 
robbery and murder, family difficulties or agreements,, 
— all such matters, I doubt not, are constantly dis- 
cussed or transacted in this sky-roofed saloon, so 
regally hung with its sombre canopy of coal-smoke. 
Whatever the disadvantages of the English climate, 
the only comfortable or wholesome part of life, for the 
city poor, must be spent in the open air. The stifled 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 317 

and squalid rooms where they lie down at night, 
whole families and neighborhoods together, or sulkily 
elbow one another in the daytime, when a settled rain 
drives them within doors, are worse horrors than it is 
worth while (without a practical object in view) to 
admit into one's imagination. No wonder that they 
creep forth from the foul mystery of their interiors, 
stumble down from their garrets, or scramble up out 
of their cellars, on the upper step of which you may 
see the grimy housewife, before the shower is ended, 
letting the raindrops gutter down her visage ; while 
her children (an impish progeny of cavernous recesses 
below the common sphere of humanity) swarm into the 
daylight and attain all that they know of personal pu- 
rification in the nearest mud-puddle. It might almost 
make a man doubt the existence of his own soul, to 
observe how Nature has flung these little wretches 
into the street and left them there, so evidently re- 
garding them as nothing worth, and how all mankind 
acquiesce in the great mother's estimate of her off- 
spring. For, if they are to have no immortality, what 
superior claim can I assert for mine ? And how 
difficult to believe that anything so precious as a germ 
of immortal growth can have been buried under this 
dirt-heap, plunged into this cesspool of misery and 
vice ! As often as I beheld the scene, it affected me 
with surprise and loathsome interest, much resembling, 
though in a far intenser degree, the feeling with 
which, when a boy, I used to turn over a plank or an 
old log that had long lain on the damp ground, and 
found a vivacious multitude of unclean and devilish- 
looking insects scampering to and fro beneath it. 
Without an infinite faith, there seemed as much pros- 
pect of a blessed futurity for those hideous bugs and 



318 OUR OLD HOME. 

many-footed worms as for these brethren of our hu- 
manity and co-heirs of all our heavenly inheritance. 
Ah, what a mystery ! Slowly, slowly, as after groping 
at the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my 
hope struggles upward to the surface, bearing the 
half-drowned body of a child along with it, and heaving 
it aloft for its life, and my own life, and all our lives. 
Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can be made 
capable of inhaling celestial air, I know not how 
the purest and most intellectual of us can reasonably 
expect ever to taste a breath of it. The whole 
question of eternity is staked there. If a single one 
of those helpless little ones be lost, the world is 
lost! 

The women and children greatly preponderate in 
such places ; the men probably wandering abroad in 
quest of that daily miracle, a dinner and a drink, or 
perhaps slumbering in the daylight that they may the 
better follow out their cat-like rambles through the 
dark. Here are women with young figures, but old, 
wrinkled, yellow faces, tanned and blear-eyed with 
the smoke which they cannot spare from their scanty 
fires, — it being too precious for its warmth to be 
swallowed by the chimney. Some of them sit on the 
door-steps, nursing their unwashed babies at bosoms 
which we will glance aside from, for the sake of our 
mothers and all womanhood, because the fairest spec- 
tacle is here the foulest. Yet motherhood, in these 
dark abodes, is strangely identical with what we have 
all known it to be in the happiest homes. Nothing, 
as I remember, smote me with more grief and pity 
(all the more poignant because perplexingly entangled 
with an inclination to smile) than to hear a gaunt 
and ragged mother priding herself on the pretty ways 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 3 19 

of her ragged and skinny infant, just as a young ma- 
tron might, when she invites her lady friends to 
admire her plump, white-robed darling in the nursery. 
Indeed, no womanly characteristic seemed to have 
altogether perished out of these poor souls. It was 
the very same creature whose tender torments make 
the rapture of our young days, whom we love, cherish, 
and protect, and rely upon in life and death, and 
whom we delight to see beautify her beauty with rich 
robes and set it off with jewels, though now fantasti- 
cally masquerading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit 
for her to handle. I recognized her, over and over 
again, in the groups round a door-step, or in the de- 
scent of a cellar, chatting with prodigious earnestness 
about intangible trifles, laughing for a little jest, 
sympathizing at almost the same instant with one 
neighbor's sunshine and another's shadow, wise, 
simple, sly, and patient, yet easily perturbed, and 
breaking into small feminine ebullitions of spite, 
wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, such as 
vary the social atmosphere of her silken-skirted sisters, 
though smothered into propriety by dint of a well-bred 
habit. Not that there was an absolute deficiency of 
good breeding, even here. It often surprised me to 
witness a courtesy and deference among these ragged 
folks, which, having seen it, I did not thoroughly be- 
lieve in, wondering whence it should have come. I am 
persuaded, however, that there were laws of inter- 
course which they never violated, — a code of the 
cellar, the garret, the common staircase, the door- 
step, and the pavement, which perhaps had as deep 
a foundation in natural fitness as the code of the 
drawing-room. 

Yet again I doubt whether I may not have been 



320 OUR OLD HOME. 

uttering folly in the last two sentences, when I reflect 
how rude and rough these specimens of feminine 
character generally were. They had a readiness with 
their hands that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and 
other heroines in Fielding's novels. For example, I 
have seen a woman meet a man in the street, and, for 
no reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by 
the hair and cuff his ears, — an infliction which he 
bore with exemplary patience, only snatching the 
very earliest opportunity to take to his heels. Where 
a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust 
to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a 
whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a resound- 
ing slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. 
All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far 
greater degree than ourselves by this simple and 
honest tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter 
one another's persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd 
of English ladies (for instance, at the door of the 
Sistine Chapel, in Holy Week) will be satisfied that 
their belligerent propensities are kept in abeyance 
only by a merciless rigor on the part of society. It 
requires a vast deal of refinement to spiritualize their 
large physical endowments. Such being the case 
with the delicate ornaments of the drawing-room, it is 
the less to be wondered at that women who live 
mostly in the open air, amid the coarsest kind of com- 
panionship and occupation, should carry on the inter- 
course of life with a freedom unknown to any class of 
American females, though still, I am resolved to think, 
compatible with a generous breadth of natural pro- 
priety. It shocked me, at first, to see them (of all 
ages, even elderly, as well as infants that could just 
toddle across the street alone) going about in the 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 32 1 

mud and mire, or through the dusky snow and slosh 
of a severe week in winter, with petticoats high up- 
lifted above bare, red feet and legs ; but I was com- 
forted by observing that both shoes and stockings 
generally reappeared with better weather, having been 
thriftily kept out of the damp for the convenience of 
dry feet within doors. Their hardihood was wonder- 
ful, and their strength greater than could have been 
expected from such spare diet as they probably lived 
upon. I have seen them carrying on their heads 
great burdens under which they walked as freely as 
if they were fashionable bonnets ; or sometimes the 
burden was huge enough almost to cover the whole 
person, looked at from behind, — as in Tuscan vil- 
lages you may see the girls coming in from the country 
with great bundles of green twigs upon their backs, 
so that they resemble locomotive masses of verdure 
and fragrance. But these poor English women 
seemed to be laden with rubbish, incongruous and 
indescribable, such as bones and rags, the sweepings 
of the house and of the street, a merchandise gathered 
up from what poverty itself had thrown away, a heap 
of filthy stuff analogous to Christian's bundle of sin. 

Sometimes, though very seldom, I detected a certain 
gracefulness among the younger women that was alto- 
gether new to my observation. It was a charm proper 
to the lowest class. One girl I particularly remember, 
in a garb none of the cleanest and nowise smart, and 
herself exceedingly coarse in all respects, but yet en- 
dowed with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a robe 
of simple beauty and suitable behavior that she was 
born in and had never been tempted to throw off, 
because she had really nothing else to put on. Eve 
herself could not have been more natural. Nothing 



322 OUR OLD HOME. 

was affected, nothing imitative ; no proper grace was 
vulgarized by an effort to assume the manners or 
adornments of another sphere. This kind of beauty, 
arrayed in a fitness of its own, is probably vanishing 
out of the world, and will certainly never be found in 
America, where all the girls, whether daughters of the 
upper-tendom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the ken- 
nel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, 
seldom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit or 
an utterly absurd failure. Those words, u genteel " 
and " ladylike," are terrible ones and do us infinite 
mischief, but it is because (at least I, hope so) we are 
in a transition state, and shall emerge into a higher 
mode of simplicity than has ever been known to past 
ages. 

In such disastrous circumstances as I have been at- 
tempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what 
a mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. 
A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neigh- 
bors, would be knitting or sewing on the door-step, 
just as fifty other women were ; but round about her 
skirts (though wofully patched) you would be sensi- 
ble of a certain sphere of decency, which, it seemed to 
me, could not have been kept more impregnable in the 
cosiest little sitting-room, where the tea-kettle on the 
hob was humming its good old song of domestic peace. 
Maidenhood had a similar power. The evil habit that 
grows upon us in this harsh world makes me faithless 
to my own better perceptions ; and yet I have seen 
girls in these wretched streets, on whose virgin purity, 
judging merely from their impression on my instincts 
as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe, at the 
moment, to stake my life. The next moment, how- 
ever, as the surrounding flood of moral uncleanness 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 323 

surged over their footsteps, I would not have staked a 
spike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the 
miracle was within the scope of Providence, which is 
equally wise and equally beneficent, (even to those 
poor girls, though I acknowledge the fact without the 
remotest comprehension of the mode of it,) whether 
they were pure or what we fellow-sinners call vile. 
Unless your faith be deep-rooted and of most vigorous 
growth, it is the safer way not to turn aside into this 
region so suggestive of miserable doubt. It was a 
place " with dreadful faces thronged," wrinkled and 
grim with vice and wretchedness ; and, thinking over 
the line of Milton here quoted, I come to the conclu- 
sion that those ugly lineaments which startled Adam 
and Eve, as they looked backward to the closed gate 
of Paradise, were no fiends from the pit, but the more 
terrible foreshadowings of what so many of their de- 
scendants were to be. God help them, and us like- 
wise, their brethren and sisters ! Let me add, that, 
forlorn, ragged, care-worn, hopeless, dirty, haggard, 
hungry, as they were, the most pitiful thing of all was 
to see the sort of patience with which they accepted 
their lot, as if they had been born into the world for 
that and nothing else. Even the little children had 
this characteristic in as perfect development as their 
grandmothers. 

The children, in truth, were the ill-omened blossoms 
from which another harvest of precisely such dark 
fruitage as I saw ripened around me was to be pro- 
duced. Of course, you would imagine these to be 
lumps of crude iniquity, tiny vessels as full as they 
could hold of naughtiness ; nor can I say a great deal 
to the contrary. Small proof of parental discipline 
coufd I discern, save when a mother (drunken, I 



324 OUR OLD HOME. 

sincerely hope) snatched her own imp out of a group 
of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions that were 
playing and squabbling together in the mud, turned 
up its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its 
poor little tenderest part, and let it go again with a 
shake. If the child knew what the punishment was 
for, it was wiser than I pretend to be. It yelled, 
and went back to its playmates in the mud. Yet let 
me bear testimony to what was beautiful, and more 
touching than anything that I ever witnessed in the 
intercourse of happier children. I allude to the super- 
intendence which some of these small people (too 
small, one would think, to be sent into the street alone, 
had there been any other nursery for them) exercised 
over still smaller ones. Whence they derived such a 
sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot 
tell ; but it was wonderful to observe the expression of 
responsibility in their deportment, the anxious fidelity 
with which they discharged their unfit office, the ten- 
der patience with which they linked their less pliable 
impulses to the wayward footsteps, of an infant, and 
let it guide them whithersoever it liked. In the 
hollow-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw 
giving a cheerless oversight to her baby-brother, I did 
not so much marvel at it. She had merely come a 
little earlier than usual to the perception of what was 
to be her business in life. But I admired the sickly- 
looking little boy, who did violence to his boyish na- 
ture by making himself the servant of his little sister, 
— she too small to walk, and he too small to take her 
in his arms, — and therefore working a kind of miracle 
to transport her from one dirt-heap to another. Be- 
holding such works of love and duty, I took heart 
again, and deemed it not so impossible, after all, for 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 325 

these neglected children to find a path through the 
squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate 
of heaven. Perhaps there was this latent good in all 
of them, though generally they looked brutish, and 
dull even in their sports ; there was little mirth among 
them, nor even a fully awakened spirit of blackguard- 
ism. Yet sometimes, again, I saw, with surprise and 
a sense as if I had been asleep and dreaming, the 
bright, intelligent, merry face of a child whose dark 
eyes gleamed with vivacious expression through the 
dirt that incrusted its skin, like sunshine struggling 
through a very dusty window-pane. 

In these streets the belted and blue-coated policeman 
appears seldom in comparison with the frequency of 
his occurrence in more reputable thoroughfares. I used 
to think that the inhabitants would have ample time to 
murder one another, or any stranger, like myself, who 
might violate the filthy sanctities of the place, before 
the law could bring up its lumbering assistance. 
Nevertheless, there is a supervision ; nor does the 
watchfulness of authority permit the populace to be 
tempted to any outbreak. Once, in a time of dearth, 
I noticed a ballad-singer going through the street 
hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a provin- 
cial dialect, of which I could only make out that it 
addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the score 
cf starvation ; but by his side stalked the policeman, 
offering no interference, but watchful to hear what 
this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him, if 
his effusion threatened to prove too soul-stirring. In 
my judgment, however, there is little or no danger of 
that kind : they starve patiently, sicken patiently, 
die patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased 
flaccidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to 



326 OUR OLD HOME. 

those above them it will probably be by the communi- 
cation of some destructive pestilence ; for, so the 
medical men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases 
with a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and 
keep among themselves traditionary plagues that have 
long ceased to afflict more fortunate societies. Charity 
herself gathers her robe about her to avoid their con- 
tact. It would be a dire revenge, indeed, if they were 
to prove their claims to be reckoned of one blood and 
nature with the noblest and wealthiest by compelling 
them to inhale death through the diffusion of their 
own poverty-poisoned atmosphere. 

A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has 
an unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. 
Beggars have heretofore been so strange to an Ameri- 
can that he is apt to become their prey, being recog- 
nized through his national peculiarities, and beset by 
them in the streets. The English smile at him, and 
say that there are ample public arrangements for every 
pauper's possible need, that street charity promotes 
idleness and vice, and that yonder personification 
of misery on the pavement will lay up a good day's 
profit, besides supping more luxuriously than the dupe 
who gives him. a shilling. By and by the stranger 
adopts their theory and begins to practise upon it, 
much to his own temporary freedom from annoyance, 
but not entirely without moral detriment or sometimes 
a too late contrition. Years afterwards, it may be, 
his memory is still haunted by some vindictive wretch 
whose cheeks were pale and hunger-pinched, whose 
rags fluttered in the east wind, whose right arm was 
paralyzed and his left leg shrivelled into a mere nerve- 
less stick, but whom he passed by remorselessly be- 
cause an Englishman chose to say that the fellow's 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 327 

misery looked too perfect, was too artistically got up, 
to be genuine. Even allowing this to be true, (as, a 
hundred chances to one, it was,) it would still have 
been a clear case of economy to buy him off with a 
little loose silver, so that his lamentable figure should 
not limp at the heels of your conscience all over the 
world. To own the truth, I provided myself with 
several such imaginary persecutors in England, and 
recruited their number with at least one sickly-looking 
wretch whose acquaintance I first made at Assisi, in 
Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sinister in his 
aspect, permitted him to beg early and late, and all 
day long, without getting a single baiocco. At my 
latest glimpse of him, the villain avenged himself, not 
by a volley of horrible curses, as any other Italian 
beggar would, but by taking an expression so grief- 
stricken, want-wrung, hopeless, and withal resigned, 
that I could paint his life-like portrait at this moment. 
Were I to go over the same ground again, I would 
listen to no man's theories, but buy the little luxury 
of beneficence at a cheap rate, instead of doing myself 
a moral mischief by exuding a stony incrustation over 
whatever natural sensibility I might possess. 

On the other hand, there were some mendicants 
whose utmost efforts I even now felicitate myself on 
having withstood. Such was a phenomenon abridged 
of his lower half, who beset me for two or three years 
together, and, in spite of his deficiency of locomotive 
members, had some supernatural method of transport- 
ing himself (simultaneously, I believe,) to all quarters 
of the city. He wore a sailor's jacket, (possibly, be- 
cause skirts would have been a superfluity to his 
figure,) and had a remarkably broad-shouldered and 
muscular frame, surmounted by a large fresh-colored 



328 OUR OLD HOME. 

face, which was full of power and intelligence. His 
dress and linen were the perfection of neatness. Once 
a day, at least, wherever I went, I suddenly became 
aware of this trunk of a man on the path before me, 
resting on his base, and looking as if he had just 
sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it 
again and reappear at some other spot the instant 
you left him behind. The expression of his eye was 
perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your 
own as by fascination, never once winking, never 
wavering from its point-blank gaze right into your 
face, till you were completely beyond the range of his 
battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his 
mode of soliciting alms ; and he reminded me of the 
old beggar who appealed so touchingly to the charita- 
ble sympathies of Gil Bias, taking aim at him from the 
roadside with a long-barrelled musket. Theintentness 
and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unre- 
lenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as it 
seemed, was the very flower of insolence ; or, if you 
give it a possibly truer interpretation, it was the tyran- 
nical effort of a man endowed with great natural force 
of character to constrain your reluctant will to his pur- 
pose. Apparently, he had staked his salvation upon 
the ultimate success of a daily struggle between him- 
self and me, the triumph of which would compel me 
to become a tributary to the hat that lay on the pave- 
ment beside him. Man or fiend, however, there was 
a stubbornness in his intended victim which this mas- 
sive fragment of a mighty personality had not alto- 
gether reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled to 
pass him at my customary pace hundreds of times 
over, quietly meeting his terribly respectful eye, and 
allowing him the fair chance which I felt to be his due, 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 329 

to subjugate me, if he really had the strength for it. 
He never succeeded, but, on the other hand, never 
gave up the contest ; and should I ever walk those 
streets again, I am certain that the truncated tyrant 
will sprout up through the pavement and look me 
fixedly in the eye, and perhaps get the victory. 

I should think all the more highly of myself if I 
had shown equal heroism in resisting another class 
of beggarly depredators, who assailed me on my 
weaker side and won an easy spoil. Such was the 
sanctimonious clergyman, with his white cravat, who 
visited me with a subscription-paper, which he himself 
had drawn up, in a case of heart-rending distress ; — 
the respectable and ruined tradesman, going from 
door to door, shy and silent in his own person, but 
accompanied by a sympathizing friend, who bore tes- 
timony to his integrity, and stated the unavoidable 
misfortunes that had crushed him down ; — or the 
delicate and prettily dressed lady, who had been bred 
in affluence, but was suddenly thrown upon the peril- 
ous charities of the world by the death of an indul- 
gent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial 
catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of 
husbands ; — or the gifted, but unsuccessful author, 
appealing to my fraternal sympathies, generously re- 
joicing in some small prosperities which he was kind 
enough to term my own triumphs in the field of 
letters, and claiming to have largely contributed to 
them by his unbought notices in the public journals. 
England is full of such people, and a hundred other 
varieties of peripatetic tricksters, higher than these, 
and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but 
seldom with an absolutely illusive effect. I knew at 
once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, 



330 OUR OLD HOME. 

almost without an exception, — rats that nibble at the 
honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow 
fat by their petty pilferings, — yet often gave them 
what they asked, and privately owned myself a simple- 
ton. There is a decorum which restrains you (unless 
you happen to be a police-constable) from breaking 
through a crust of plausible respectability, even when 
you are certain that there is a knave beneath it. 

After making myself as familiar as I decently could 
with the poor streets, I became curious to see what 
kind of a home was provided for the inhabitants at 
the public expense, fearing that it must needs be a 
most comfortless one, or else their choice (if choice it 
were) of so miserable a life outside was truly difficult 
to account for. Accordingly, I visited a great alms- 
house, and was glad to observe how unexceptionably 
all the parts of the establishment were carried on, and 
what an orderly life, full-fed, sufficiently reposeful, 
and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of authority, 
seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was that 
very orderliness, and the cruel necessity of being neat 
and clean, and even the comfort resulting from these 
and other Christian-like restraints and regulations, 
that constituted the principal grievance on the part of 
the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to a life-long 
luxury of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild life 
of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a charm, to 
those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as the 
life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather 
that there must be insuperable difficulties, for the 
majority of the poor in the way of getting admittance 
to the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic prefer- 
ence for the street would incline the pauper-class to 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 33 I 

fare scantily and precariously, and expose their ragged- 
ness to the rain and snow, when such a hospitable 
door stood wide open for their entrance. It might be 
that the roughest and darkest side of the matter was 
not shown me, there being persons of eminent station 
and of both sexes in the party which I accompanied ; 
and, of course, a properly trained public functionary 
would have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as well 
as a great shame, to exhibit anything to people of 
rank that might too painfully shock their sensibil- 
ities. 

The women's ward was the portion of the establish- 
ment which we especially examined. It could not be 
questioned that they were treated with kindness as 
well as care. No doubt, as has been already suggested, 
some of them felt the irksomeness of submission to 
general rules of orderly behavior, after being accus- 
tomed to that perfect freedom from the minor pro- 
prieties, at least, which is one of the compensations 
of absolutely hopeless poverty, or of any circumstances 
that set us fairly below the decencies of life. I asked 
the governor of the house whether he met with any 
difficulty in keeping peace and order among his in- 
mates ; and he informed me that his troubles among the 
women were incomparably greater than with the men. 
They were freakish, and apt to be quarrelsome, inclined 
to plague and pester one another in ways that it was 
impossible to lay hold of, and to thwart his own 
authority by the like intangible methods. He said 
this with the utmost good-nature, and quite won my re- 
gard by so placidly resigning himself to the inevitable 
necessity of letting the women throw dust into his 
eyes. They certainly looked peaceable and sisterly 
enough, as I saw them, though still it might be faintly 



332 OUR OLD HOME. 

perceptible that some of them were consciously play- 
ing their parts before the governor and his distin- 
guished visitors. 

This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit 
for his position. An American, in an office of similar 
responsibility, would doubtless be a much superior 
person, better educated, possessing a far wider range 
of thought, more naturally acute, with a quicker tact 
of external observation and a readier faculty of dealing 
with difficult cases. The women would not succeed 
in throwing half so much dust into his eyes. More- 
over, his black coat, and thin, sallow visage, would 
make him look like a scholar, and his manners would 
indefinitely approximate to those of a gentleman. 
But I cannot help questioning, whether, on the whole, 
these higher endowments would produce decidedly 
better results. The Englishman was thoroughly 
plebeian both in aspect and behavior, a bluff, ruddy- 
faced, hearty, kindly, yeoman-like personage, with no 
refinement whatever, nor any superfluous sensibility, 
but gifted with a native wholesomeness of character 
which must have been a very beneficial element in 
the atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke to his 
pauper family in loud, good-humored, cheerful tones, 
and treated them with a healthy freedom that probably 
caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they were free 
and healthy likewise. If he had understood them a 
little better, he would not have treated them half so 
wisely. We are apt to make sickly people more mor- 
bid, and unfortunate people more miserable, by en- 
deavoring to adapt our deportment to their especial and 
individual needs. They eagerly accept our well-meant 
efforts ; but it is like returning their own sick breath 
back upon themselves, to be breathed over and over 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 333 

again, intensifying the inward mischief at every repe- 
tition. The sympathy that would really do them good 
is of a kind that recognizes their sound and healthy 
parts, and ignores the part affected by disease, which 
will thrive under the eye of a too close observer like a 
poisonous weed in the sunshine. My good friend the 
governor had no tendencies in the latter direction, 
and abundance of them in the former, and was con- 
sequently as wholesome and invigorating as the west 
wind with a little spice of the north in it, brightening 
the dreary visages that encountered us as if he had 
carried a sunbeam in his hand. He expressed himself 
by his whole being and personality, and by works 
more than words, and had the not unusual English 
merit of knowing what to do much better than how to 
talk about it. 

The women, I imagine, must have felt one imper- 
fection in their state, however comfortable otherwise. 
They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the 
means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorn- 
ing themselves ; all were dressed in one homely uni- 
form of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their 
heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they 
had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of 
features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to 
constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these abso- 
lutely unilluminated faces among our native American 
population, individuals of whom must be singularly 
unfortunate, if, mixing as we do, no drop of gentle 
blood has contributed to refine the turbid element, no 
gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the 
stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought from the 
Old Country. Even in this English almshouse, how- 
ever, there was at least one person who claimed to be 



334 0VR 0LD HOME. 

intimately connected with rank and wealth. The gov- 
ernor, after suggesting that this person would probably 
be gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small parlor, 
which was furnished a little more like a room in a pri- 
vate dwelling than others that we entered, and had a 
row of religious books and fashionable novels on the 
mantelpiece. An old lady sat at a bright coal fire, 
reading a romance, and rose to receive us with a cer- 
tain pomp of manner and elaborate display of cere- 
monious courtesy, which, in spite of myself, made me 
inwardly question the genuineness of her aristocratic 
pretensions. But, at any rate, she looked like a re- 
spectable old soul, and was evidently gladdened to 
the very core of her frost-bitten heart by the awful 
punctiliousness with which we responded to her 
gracious and hospitable, though unfamiliar welcome. 
After a little polite conversation, we retired ; and the 
governor, with a lowered voice and an air of deference, 
told us that she had been a lady of quality, and had 
ridden in her own equipage, not many years before, 
and now lived in continual expectation that some of 
her rich relatives would drive up in their carriages to 
take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated 
with great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not 
help thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in 
her talk and manner, that there might have been a 
mistake on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial 
exaggeration on the old lady's, concerning her former 
position in society ; but what struck me was the forci- 
ble instance of that most prevalent of English vanities, 
the pretension to aristocratic connection, on one side, 
and the submission and reverence with which it was 
accepted by the governor and his household, on the 
other. Among ourselves, I think, when wealth and 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 335 

eminent position have taken their departure, they 
seldom leave a pallid ghost behind them, — or, if it 
sometimes stalks abroad, few recognize it. 

We went into several other rooms, at the doors of 
which, pausing on the outside, we could hear the volu- 
bility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female 
inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and 
peace when we stepped over the threshold. The 
women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, 
sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, 
classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, 
and all busied, so far as I can remember, with the one 
occupation of knitting coarse yarn stockings. Hardly 
any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheer- 
ful air, though it often stirred them up to a momen- 
tary vivacity to be accosted by the governor, and they 
seemed to like being noticed, however slightly, by 
the visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there 
(and, running hastily through my experiences, I hardly 
recollect to have seen a happier one in my life, if you 
take a careless flow of spirits as happiness) was an 
old woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy- 
looking females, who plied their knitting-work round 
about her. She laughed, when we entered, and im- 
mediately began to talk to us, in a thin, little, spirited 
quaver, claiming to be more than a century old ; and 
the governor (in whatever way he happened to be 
cognizant of the fact) confirmed her age to be a hun- 
dred and four. Her jauntiness and cackling merri- 
ment were really wonderful. It was as if she had got 
through with all her actual business in life two or 
three generations ago, and now, freed from every re- 
sponsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up 
a mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long 



336 OUR OLD HOME. 

time, (and, happy as she was, she appeared not to 
care whether it were long or short,) before Death, 
who had misplaced her name in his list, might remem- 
ber to take her away. She had gone quite round the 
circle of human existence, and come back to the play- 
ground again. And so she had grown to be a kind 
of miraculous old pet, the plaything of people seventy 
or eighty years younger than herself, who talked and 
laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great 
delight in her wayward and strangely playful responses, 
into some of which she cunningly conveyed a gibe 
that caused their ears to tingle a little. She had done 
getting out of bed in this world, and lay there to be 
waited upon like a queen or a baby. 

In the same room sat a pauper who had once been 
an actress of considerable repute, but was compelled 
to give up her profession by a softening of the brain. 
The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out 
of her life, and disturbed all healthy relationship be- 
tween the thoughts within her and the world without. 
On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and 
showed herself ready to engage in conversation ; but 
suddenly, while we were talking with the century-old 
crone, the poor actress began to weep, contorting her 
face with extravagant stage-grimaces, and wringing 
her hands for some inscrutable sorrow. It might 
have been a reminiscence of actual calamity in her 
past life, or, quite as probably, it was but a dramatic 
woe, beneath which she had staggered and shrieked 
and wrung her hands with hundreds of repetitions in 
the sight of crowded theatres, and been as often com- 
forted by thunders of applause. But my idea of the 
mystery was, that she had a sense of wrong in seeing 
the aged woman (whose empty vivacity was like the 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 337 

rattling of dry peas in a bladder) chosen as the cen- 
tral object of interest to the visitors, while she herself, 
who had agitated thousands of hearts with a breath, 
sat starving for the admiration that was her natural 
food. I appeal to the whole society of artists of the 
Beautiful and the Imaginative, — poets, romancers, 
painters, sculptors, actors, — whether or no this is a 
grief that may be felt even amid the torpor of a dis- 
solving brain ! 

We looked into a good many sleeping-chambers, 
where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two 
occupants, and provided with sheets and pillow-cases 
that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the 
sense of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the 
arrangements of the almshouse ; a little cheap luxury 
for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a sub- 
stantial good. But, at all events, there was the beauty 
of perfect neatness and orderliness, which, being here- 
tofore known to few of them, was perhaps as much as 
they could well digest in the remnant of their lives. 
We were invited into the laundry, where a great 
washing and drying were in process, the whole at- 
mosphere being hot and vaporous with the steam of 
wet garments and bedclothes. This atmosphere was 
the pauper-life of the past week or fortnight resolved 
into a gaseous state, and breathing it, however fas- 
tidiously, we were forced to inhale the strange element 
into our inmost being. Had the Queen been there, I 
know not how she could have escaped the necessity. 
What an intimate brotherhood is this in which we 
dwell, do what we may to put an artificial remoteness 
between the high creature and the low one ! A poor 
man's breath, borne on the vehicle of tobacco-smoke, 
floats into a palace-window and reaches the nostrils 



338 OUR OLD HOME. 

of a monarch. It is but an example, obvious to the 
sense, of the innumerable and secret channels by 
which, at every moment of our lives, the flow and 
reflux of a common humanity pervade us all. How 
superficial are the niceties of such as pretend to keep 
aloof ! Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a 
man or woman of us all can be clean. 

By and by we came to the ward where the children 
were kept, on entering which, we saw, in the first 
place, several unlovely and unwholesome little people 
lazily playing together in a courtyard. And here a 
singular incommodity befell one member of our party. 
Among the children was a wretched, pale, half-torpid 
little thing, (about six years old, perhaps, but I know 
not whether a girl or a boy,) with a humor in its eyes 
and face, which the governor said was the scurvy, 
and which appeared to bedim its powers of vision, so 
that it toddled about gropingly, as if in quest of it 
did not precisely know what. This child — this 
sickly, wretched, humor-eaten infant, the offspring of 
unspeakable sin and sorrow, whom it must have re- 
quired several generations of guilty progenitors to 
render so pitiable an object as we beheld it — imme- 
diately took an unaccountable fancy to the gentleman 
just hinted at. It prowled about him like a pet kitten, 
rubbing against his legs, following everywhere at his 
heels, pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all 
the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got 
directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely 
insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, 
being perhaps under-witted and incapable of prattle. 
But it smiled up in his face, — a sort of woful gleam 
was that smile, through the sickly blotches that 
covered its features, — and found means to express 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 339 

such a perfect confidence that it was going to be 
fondled and made much of, that there was no possi- 
bility in a human heart of balking its expectation. It 
was as if God had promised the poor child this favor 
on behalf of that individual, and he was bound to 
fulfil the contract, or else no longer call himself a man 
among men. Nevertheless, it could be no easy thing 
for him to do, he being a person burdened with more 
than an Englishman's customary reserve, shy of actual 
contact with human beings, afflicted with a peculiar 
distaste for whatever was ugly, and, furthermore, 
accustomed to that habit of observation from an in- 
sulated standpoint which is said (but, I hope, erro- 
neously) to have the tendency of putting ice into the 
blood. 

So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good 
deal of interest, and am seriously of opinion that he 
did an heroic act, and effected more than he dreamed 
of towards his final salvation, when he took up the 
loathsome child and caressed it as tenderly as if he 
had been its father. To be sure, we all smiled at him, 
at the time, but doubtless would have acted pretty 
much the same in a similar stress of circumstances. 
The child, at any rate, appeared to be satisfied with 
his behavior ; for when he had held it a considerable 
time, and set it down, it still favored him with its 
company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger till we 
reached the confines of the place. And on our re- 
turn through the courtyard, after visiting another part 
of the establishment, here again was this same little 
Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of 
joyful and yet dull recognition about its scabby mouth 
and in its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the child's mission 
in reference to our friend was to remind him that he 



340 OUR OLD HOME. 

was responsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings 
and misdemeanors of the world in which he lived, 
and was not entitled to look upon a particle of its 
dark calamity as if it were none of his concern : the 
offspring of a brother's iniquity being his own blood- 
relation, and the guilt, likewise, a burden on him, 
unless he expiated it by better deeds. 

All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, 
and, going up-stairs, we found more of them in the 
same or a worse condition than the little creature just 
described, with their mothers (or more probably 
other women, for the infants were mostly foundlings) 
in attendance as nurses. The matron of the ward, a 
middle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly 
in aspect, was walking to and fro across the chamber 
— on that weary journey in which careful mothers 
and nurses travel so continually and so far, and gain 
never a step of progress — with an unquiet baby in 
her arms. She assured us that she enjoyed her occu- 
pation, being exceedingly fond of children ; and, in 
fact, the absence of timidity in all the little people was 
a sufficient proof that they could have had no experi- 
ence of harsh treatment, though, on the other hand, 
none of them appeared to be attracted to one individ- 
ual more than another. In this point they differed 
widely from the poor child below-stairs. They seemed 
to recognize a universal motherhood in womankind, 
and cared not which individual might be the mother 
of the moment. I found their tameness as shocking 
as did Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of 
his else solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame 
familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach of 
strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. 
I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 341 

state of body, incapable of the quick thrills of delight 
and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings of a 
healthy child's nature, and partly by their woful lack 
of acquaintance with a private home, and their being 
therefore destitute of the sweet homebred shyness, 
which is like the sanctity of heaven about a mother- 
petted child. Their condition was like that of chickens 
hatched in an oven, and growing up without the espe- 
cial guardianship of a matron- hen : both the chicken 
and the child, methinks, must needs want something 
that is essential to their respective characters. 

In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a 
large number of beds) there was a clear fire burning on 
the hearth, as in all the other occupied rooms ; and 
directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a 
baby, which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the 
most horrible. object that ever afflicted my sight. Days 
afterwards — nay, even now, when I bring it up vividly 
before my mind's eye — it seemed to lie upon the floor 
of my heart, polluting my moral being with the sense of 
something grievously amiss in the entire conditions of 
humanity. The holiest man could not be otherwise 
than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed 
impure, in a world where such a babe was possible. 
The governor whispered me, apart, that, like nearly 
all the rest of them, it was the child of unhealthy 
parents. Ah, yes ! There was the mischief. This 
spectral infant, a hideous mockery of the visible link 
which Love creates between man and woman, was born 
of disease and sin. Diseased Sin was its father, and 
Sinful Disease its mother, and their offspring lay in 
the woman's arms like a nursing Pestilence, which, 
could it live and grow up, would make the world a 
more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank 



342 OUR OLD HOME. 

Heaven, it could not live! This baby, if we must give 
it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months 
old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might 
have been considerably older. It was all covered with 
blotches, and preternaturally dark and discolored ; it 
was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless ; it 
breathed only amid pantings andgaspings, and moaned 
painfully at every gasp. The only comfort in reference 
to it was the evident impossibility of its surviving to 
draw many more of those miserable, moaning breaths ; 
and it would have been infinitely less heart-depress- 
ing to see it die right before my eyes, than to depart 
and carry it alive in my remembrance, still suffer- 
ing the incalculable torture of its little life. I can 
by no means express how horrible this infant was, 
neither ought I to attempt it. And yet I must add one 
final touch. Young as the poor little creature was, its 
pain and misery had endowed it with a premature 
intelligence, insomuch that its eyes seemed to stare 
at the by-standers out of their sunken sockets know- 
ingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one and all 
to witness the deadly wrong of its existence. At 
least, I so interpreted its look, when it positively met 
and responded to my own awe-stricken gaze, and 
therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before 
mankind, on whom God has imposed the necessity 
to suffer in soul and body till this dark and dreadful 
wrong be righted. 

Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were 
underneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children 
whom we had just seen, were, in large proportion, 
foundlings. Almost without exception, they looked 
sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in their doltish 
faces, and a general tendency to diseases of the eye. 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 343 

Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be un- 
easy within their skins, and screwed themselves about 
on the benches in a disagreeably suggestive way, as if 
they had inherited the evil habits of their parents as 
an innermost garment of the same texture and material 
as the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with unspeak- 
able discomfort as long as they lived. I saw only a 
single child that looked healthy ; and on my pointing 
him out, the governor informed me that this little boy, 
the sole exception to the miserable aspect of his school- 
fellows, was not a foundling, nor properly a workhouse 
child, being born of respectable parentage, and his 
father one of the officers of the institution. As for the 
remainder, — the hundred pale abortions to be counted 
against one rosy-cheeked boy, — what shall we say 
or do? Depressed by the sight of so much misery, 
and uninventive of remedies for the evils that force 
themselves on my perception, I can do little more 
than recur to the idea already hinted at in the early 
part of this article, regarding the speedy necessity of 
a new deluge. So far as these children are concerned, 
at any rate, it would be a blessing to the human race, 
which they will contribute to enervate and corrupt, — 
a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no patri- 
mony but disease and vice, and in whose souls if there 
be a spark of God's life, this seems the only possible 
mode of keeping it aglow, — if every one of them could 
be drowned to-night, by their best friends, instead of be- 
ing put tenderly to bed. This heroic method of treat- 
ing human maladies, moral and material, is certainly 
beyond the scope of man's discretionary rights, and 
probably will not be adopted by Divine Providence 
until the opportunity of milder reformation shall 
hive he Q n offered us, again and again, through a 
series of future ages. 



344 0UR 0LD home. 

It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and 
excellent governor, as well as other persons better ac- 
quainted with the subject than myself, took a less 
gloomy view of it, though still so dark a one as to 
involve scanty consolation. They remarked that in- 
dividuals of the male sex, picked up in the streets and 
nurtured in the workhouse, sometimes succeed tolera- 
bly well in life, because they are taught trades before 
being turned into the world, and, by dint of immacu- 
late behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get 
employment and earn a livelihood. The case is dif- 
ferent with the girls. They can only go to service, 
and are invariably rejected by families of respectabil- 
ity on account of their origin, and for the better rea- 
son of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the 
meanest situations in a well-ordered English house- 
hold. Their resource is to take service with people 
only a step or two above the poorest class, with 
whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead 
shifting and precarious lives, and finally drop into 
the slough of evil, through which, in their best estate, 
they do but pick their slimy 'way on stepping-stones. 

From the schools we went to the bake-house, and 
the brew-house, (for such cruelty is not harbored in 
the heart of a true Englishman as to deny a pauper 
his daily allowance of beer,) and through the kitchens, 
where we beheld an immense pot over the fire, surg- 
ing and walloping with some kind of a savory stew 
that filled it up to its brim. We also visited a tailor's 
shop, and a shoemaker's shop, in both of which a 
number of men, and pale, diminutive apprentices, were 
at work, diligently enough, though seemingly with 
small heart in the business. Finally, the governor 
ushered us into a shed, inside of which was piled 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 345 

up an immense quantity of new coffins. They were 
of the plainest description, made of pine boards, prob- 
ably of American growth, not very nicely smoothed 
by the plane, neither painted nor stained with black, 
but provided with a loop of rope at either end for the 
convenience of lifting the rude box and its inmate 
into the cart that shall carry them to the burial- 
ground. There, in holes ten feet deep, the paupers 
are buried one above another, mingling their relics in- 
distinguishably. In another world may they resume 
their individuality, and find it a happier one than here ! 

As we departed, a character came under our notice 
which I have met with in all almshouses, whether of 
the city or village, or in England or America. It was 
the familiar simpleton, who shuffled across the court- 
yard, clattering his wooden-soled shoes, to greet us 
with a howl or a laugh, I hardly know which, holding 
out his hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly when 
it was given him. All underwitted persons, so far as 
my experience goes, have this craving for copper coin, 
and appear to estimate its value by a miraculous in- 
stinct, which is one of the earliest gleams of human 
intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in abey- 
ance. There may come a time, even in this world, 
when we shall all understand that our tendency to the 
individual appropriation of gold and broad acres, fine 
houses, and such good and beautiful things as are 
equally enjoyable by a multitude, is but a trait of im- 
perfectly developed intelligence, like the simpleton's 
cupidity of a penny. When that day dawns, — and 
probably not till then, — I imagine that there will be 
no more poor streets nor need of almshouses. 

I was once present at the wedding of some poor 
English people, and was deeply impressed by the 



346 OUR OLD HOME. 

spectacle, though by no means with such proud and 
delightful emotions as seem to have affected all Eng- 
land on the recent occasion of the marriage of its 
Prince. It was in the Cathedral at Manchester, a 
particularly black and grim old structure, into which 
I had stepped to examine some ancient and curious 
wood-carvings within the choir. The woman in at- 
tendance greeted me with a smile, (which always glim- 
mers forth on the feminine visage, I know not why, 
when a wedding is in question,) and asked me to 
take a seat in the nave till some poor parties were 
married, it being the Easter holidays, and a good time 
for them to marry, because no fees would be demanded 
by the clergyman. I sat down accordingly, and soon 
the parson and his clerk appeared at the altar, and a 
considerable crowd of people made their entrance at a 
side-door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled 
line across the chancel. They were my acquaintances 
of the poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar 
condition of life, and were now come to their marriage 
ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them 
wear : the men in their loafers' coats, out at elbows, 
or their laborers' jackets, defaced with grimy toil ; the 
women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about 
their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath ; all 
of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, 
and wrinkled with penury and care ; nothing virgin-like 
in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the bride- 
grooms ; — they were, in short, the mere rags and 
tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind of 
evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced to 
sweep together into an unfragrant heap. Each and 
all of them, conscious of his or her individual misery, 
had blundered into the strange miscalculation of sup- 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 347 

posing that they could lessen the sum of it by multi- 
plying it into the misery of another person. All the 
couples (and it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, 
to compute exactly their number) stood up at once, 
and had execution done upon them in the lump, the 
clergyman addressing only small parts of the service 
to each individual pair, but so managing the larger 
portion as to include the whole company without the 
trouble of repetition. By this compendious contriv- 
ance, one would apprehend, he came dangerously near 
making every man and woman the husband or wife of 
every other ; nor, perhaps, would he have perpetrated 
much additional mischief by the mistake ; but, after 
receiving a benediction in common, they assorted 
themselves in their own fashion, as they only knew 
how, and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the 
unsheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon 
and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson 
smiled decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned 
broadly, the female attendant tittered almost aloud, 
and even the married parties seemed to see something 
exceedingly funny in the affair ; but for my part, 
though generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I 
laid it away in my memory as one of the saddest sights 
I ever looked upon. 

Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing 
the same venerable Cathedral, and heard a clang of 
joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down 
the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a 
portly coachman and two postilions, that waited at the 
gate. One parson and one service had amalgamated 
the wretchedness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and 
three or four clergymen had combined their spiritual 
might to forge the golden links of this other marriage 



348 OUR OLD HOME. 

bond. The bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless 
and kindly English pride; the bride floated along in 
her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that 
it was a luxury to see her, and a pity that her silk 
slippers should touch anything so grimy as the old 
stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of rag- 
ged people, who always cluster to witness what they 
may of an aristocratic wedding, broke into audible 
admiration of the bride's beauty and the bridegroom's 
manliness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possi- 
bly paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the 
most favorable of earthly conditions could make them 
happy, they had every prospect of it. They were go- 
ing to live on their abundance in one of those stately 
and delightful English homes, such as no other people 
ever created or inherited, a hall set far and safe within 
its own private grounds, and surrounded with vener- 
able trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trimmest 
pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended 
that summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter 
would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ; and all this fair 
property seemed more exclusively and inalienably 
their own, because of its descent through many fore- 
fathers, each of whom had added an improvement or 
a charm, and thus transmitted it with a stronger stamp 
of rightful possession to his heir. And is it possible, 
after all, that there may be a flaw in the title-deeds ? 
Is, or is not, the system wrong that gives one married 
pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious home, and 
shuts out a million others from any home whatever? 
One day or another, safe as they deem themselves, 
and safe as the hereditary temper of the people really 
tends to make them, the gentlemen of England will 
be compelled to face this question. 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 349 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 

It has often perplexed me to imagine how an 
Englishman will be able to reconcile himself to any 
future state of existence from which the earthly insti- 
tution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to 
take his appetite along with him, (which it seems to 
me hardly possible to believe, since this endowment 
is so essential to his composition,) the immortal day 
must still admit an interim of two or three hours dur- 
ing which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all 
events, if not an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual 
nutriment. The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself 
among his highest and deepest characteristics, so 
illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with 
the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with 
Church and State, and grown so majestic with long 
hereditary customs and ceremonies, that, by taking it 
utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch 
to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less com- 
plete than we have already known him. He could 
not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoy- 
ments, would lack one daily felicity which his sombre 
little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent 
to conjecture that a provision may have been made, in 
this particular, for the Englishman^ exceptional neces- 
sities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion 
here suggested, and may have intended to throw out 
a delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen. 



350 OUR OLD HOME. 

when he represents the genial archangel as playing 
his part with such excellent appetite at Adam's 
dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vege- 
tables only because, in those early days of her house- 
keeping, Eve had no more acceptable viands to set 
before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English taste 
for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the 
lofty and poetic discipline to which he had subjected 
himself. It is delicately implied in the refection in 
Paradise, and more substantially, though still elegantly, 
betrayed in the sonnet proposing to " Laurence, of 
virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little 
dinners in midwinter ; and it blazes fully out in 
that u'ntasted banquet which, elaborate as it was, 
Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges of 
Tartarus. 

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their genera- 
tion, dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent 
of the dishes that may be set upon the table ; so that 
if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due 
reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoy- 
ment which such reckless devourers as ourselves do 
not often find in our richest abundance. It is good to 
see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of 
heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers 
and indulging a vigorous appetite ; whereas an Amer- 
ican has generally lost the one and learned to distrust 
the other long before reaching the earliest decline of 
life ; and thenceforward he makes little account of his 
dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not 
whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them, 
though I think it scarcely too much to affirm, that, on 
this side of the water, people never dine. At any 
rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 35 I 

of the material requisites, the highest possible dinner 
has never yet been eaten in America. It is the con- 
summate flower of civilization and refinement ; and 
our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admira- 
ble beauty, if a happy inspiration should bring it into 
bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we have 
attained. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of 
cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this 
elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the 
national character is still an impediment to them, 
even in that particular line where they are best quali- 
fied to excel. Though often present at good men's 
feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, 
while lamentably conscious that many of its higher 
excellences were thrown away upon me, I yet could 
feel to be a perfect work of art. It could not, without 
unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal 
enjoyment, because, out of the very perfection of that 
lower bliss, there had arisen a dreamlike development 
of spiritual happiness. As in the masterpieces of 
painting and poetry, there was a something intangible, 
a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your 
comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to de- 
tain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith 
rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of 
senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, 
for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the 
guests around the table (only eight in number) were 
becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the 
delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to 
be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And 
there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which 
we find in the very summit of our most exquisite en- 



352 OUR OLD HOME. 

joyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety 
through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In 
the present case, it was worth a heavier sigh to reflect 
that such a festal achievement, — the production of so 
much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste, — 
the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been 
ripening for this hour, since man first began to eat 
and to moisten his food with wine, — must lavish its 
happiness upon so brief a moment, when other beauti- 
ful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner 
like this is no better than we can get, any day, at the 
rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless the whole 
man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready to 
appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a 
harmony in all the circumstances and accompani- 
ments, and especially such a pitch of well-according 
minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the 
guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, 
and especially our part of it, being the rough, ill- 
assorted, and tumultuous place we find it, a beefsteak 
is about as good as any other dinner. 

The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me 
aside from the main object of my sketch, in which I 
purposed to give a slight idea of those public, or par- 
tially public banquets, the custom of which so thor- 
oughly prevails among the English people, that 
nothing is ever decided upon, in matters of peace or 
war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of 
roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor 
are these festivities merely occasional, but of stated 
recurrence in all considerable municipalities and as- 
sociated bodies. The most ancient times appear to 
have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen 
of to-day. In many of the old English towns you 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 353 

find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which 
the Mayor and other authorities of the place have 
long held their sessions ; and always, in convenient 
contiguity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense 
fireplace where an ox might lie roasting at his ease, 
though the less gigantic scale of modern cookery may 
now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its 
chimney. St. Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a 
specimen of an ancient banqueting-room, that perhaps 
I may profitably devote a page or two to the description 
of it. 

In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, 
one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold 
a mediaeval edifice, in the basement of which is such 
a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above 
alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low 
stone pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of 
a cathedral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the 
oaken balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you 
enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and 
broad and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six 
windows of modern stained glass, on one side, and by 
the immense and magnificent arch of another window 
at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient 
panes constituting a genuine historical piece, in which 
are represented some of the kingly personages of old 
times, with their heraldic blazonries. Notwithstand- 
ing the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and 
though it was noonday when I last saw it, the panel- 
ling of black oak, and some faded tapestry that hung 
round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the 
roof above, made a gloom, which the richness only 
illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry 
is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI.'s 



354 OUR OLD HOME. 

time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is regarded 
by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the 
costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual 
portraiture of men known in history. They are as 
colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily into 
the old stitch-work of their substance when you try to 
make them out. Coats-of-arms were formerly em- 
blazoned all round the hall, but have been almost 
rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against 
them or by women with dishclouts and scrubbing- 
brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind 
hostility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-length por- 
traits of several English kings, Charles II. being the 
earliest, hang on the walls ; and on the dais, or ele- 
vated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of 
state, which several royal characters are traditionally 
said to have occupied while feasting here with their 
loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a 
person of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular 
and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles 
which used to be seen in old-fashioned New England 
kitchens. 

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, 
without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling 
' of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, 
with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At 
the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern 
that they are carved with figures of angels and doubt- 
less many other devices, of which the admirable 
Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so 
long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the 
hall, opposite the great arched window, the party- 
colored radiance of which glimmers faintly through 
the interval, is a gallery for minstrels ; and a row of 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 355 

ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. 
It impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would 
fain leave nothing untouched upon,) that I remember, 
somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture 
of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the 
artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's 
hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was 
certainly much need for the good people of Coventry 
to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I 
have made but a poor hand at the description, as 
regards a transference of the scene from my own mind 
to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid idea of an- 
tiquity that had been very little tampered with ; inso- 
much that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come 
clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and 
beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, 
rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, 
unveiling a face of j^eauty somewhat tarnished in the 
mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of 
harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery, while the 
rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound 
beneath, — why, I should have felt that these shadows, 
once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in 
St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger from a far country 
which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing 
description is to show how tenaciously this love of 
pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred 
institution, has caught hold of the English character; 
since, from the earliest recognizable period, we find 
them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnifi- 
cently as their palaces or cathedrals. 

I know not whether the hall just described is now 
used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiq- 
uity and splendor still are. For example, there is 



356 OUR OLD HOME. 

Barber Surgeons 1 Hall, in London, a very fine old 
room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on 
the ceiling and walls. It is also enriched with Hol- 
bein's masterpiece, representing a grave assemblage 
of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such ex- 
tensive beards that methinks one half of the company 
might have been profitably occupied in trimming the 
other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Robert 
Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the 
liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, 
he conditioning to have a perfect fac-simile painted in. 
The room has many other pictures of distinguished 
members of the company in long-past times, and of 
some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all 
darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe mag- 
nificence as only age could bestow. It is not my design 
to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting 
on the reader ; but it may be worth while to touch 
upon other modes of stateliness that still survive in 
these time-honored civic feasts, where there appears 
to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn 
pomp by respectable citizens who would never dream 
of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their own 
sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the warden 
and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real 
coronets or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) 
wrought in open-work and lined with crimson velvet. 
In a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a 
great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet- 
table, comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast 
silver punch-bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, 
and, besides a multitude of less noticeable vessels, two 
loving-cups, very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, 
one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 357 

These cups, including the covers and pedestals, 
are very large and weighty, although the bowl-part 
would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, 
which, when the custom was first established, each 
guest was probably expected to drink off at a draught. 
In passing them from hand to hand adown a long 
table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony 
which I may hereafter have occasion to describe. 
Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty, I should 
be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner-table 
of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport 
where I spent several years. 

The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once 
a fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty 
at a time, his Worship probably assembles at his 
board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished 
personages of the town and neighborhood more than 
once during his year's incumbency, and very much, no 
doubt, to the promotion of good feeling among indi- 
viduals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. 
A miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find 
more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many 
Americans, their differences of opinion being incom- 
parably less radical than ours, and it being the sincer- 
est wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves 
Liberals or what not, that nothing in this world shall 
ever be greatly altered from what it has been and is. 
Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political hos- 
tility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of 
wine, without making the good liquor any more dry 
or bitter than accords with English taste. 

The first dinner of this kind at which I had the 
honor to be present took place during assize-time, 
and included among the guests the judges and the 



358 OUR OLD HOME, 

prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town 
Hall at seven o'clock, I communicated my name to 
one of several splendidly dressed footmen, and he re- 
peated it to another on the first staircase, by whom it 
was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the 
door of the reception-room, losing all resemblance 
to the original sound in the course of these transmis- 
sions ; so that I had the advantage of making my 
entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to 
the whole company, but to myself as well. His Wor- 
ship, however, kindly recognized me, and put me on 
speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I 
found very affable, and all the more hospitably atten- 
tive on the score of my nationality. It is very singu- 
lar how kind an Englishman will almost invariably be 
to an individual American, without ever bating a jot 
of his prejudice against the American character in the 
lump. My new acquaintances took evident pains to 
put me at my ease ; and, in requital of their good- 
nature, I soon began to look round at the general com- 
pany in a critical spirit, making my crude observations 
apart, and drawing silent inferences, of the correctness 
of which I should not have been half so well satisfied 
a year afterwards as at that moment. 

There were two judges present, a good many law- 
yers, and a few officers of the army in uniform. The 
other guests seemed to be principally of the mercan- 
tile class, and among them was a ship-owner from 
Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch 
as we were born with the same sky over our heads, 
and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode 
and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose char- 
acter I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in 
black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a rapier 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 359 

at his side ; otherwise, with the exception of the mili- 
tary uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official 
costume. It being the first considerable assemblage 
of Englishmen that I # had seen, my honest impression 
about them was, that they were a heavy and homely 
set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect 
and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it 
required more familiarity with the national character 
than I then possessed always to detect the good 
breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle- 
aged, or still farther advanced, they were by no means 
graceful in figure ; for the comeliness of the youthful 
Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his body 
appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate them- 
selves, and his stomach to assume the dignified promi- 
nence which justly belongs to that metropolis of his 
system. His face (what with the acridity of the at- 
mosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well- 
digested abundance of succulent food) gets red and 
mottled, and develops at least one additional chin, 
with a promise of more ; so that, finally, a stranger 
recognizes his animal part at the most superficial 
glance, but must take time and a little pains to dis- 
cover the intellectual. Comparing him with an Ameri- 
can, I really thought that our national paleness and 
lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in 
an aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, more- 
over, that the English tailor had not done so much as 
he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had 
gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by 
the roominess of their garments ; he had evidently no 
idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out 
of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I 
afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid tailor 



360 OUR OLD HOME. 

has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, 
knowing how to dress his customers with such indi- 
vidual propriety that they look as if they were born 
in their clothes, the fit being to the character rather 
than the form. If you make an Englishman smart, 
(unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have 
seen a few,) you make him a monster ; his best aspect 
is that of ponderous respectability. 

To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied 
that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any in- 
land county in New England, might show a set of thin- 
visaged men, looking wretchedly worn, sallow, deeply 
wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly furrowed 
about the mouth, with whom these heavy-cheeked 
English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they 
must needs be, would stand very little chance in a 
professional contest. How that matter might turn 
out, I am unqualified to decide. But I state these 
results of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not for 
what they are worth, but because I ultimately gave 
them up as worth little or nothing. In course of time, 
I came to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages 
are a rather good-looking people, dress in admirable 
taste from their own point of view, and, under a sur- 
face never silken to the touch, have a refinement of 
manners too thorough and genuine to be thought 
of as a separate endowment, — that is to say, if the 
individual himself be a man of station, and has had 
gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The sturdy 
Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the 
third generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other 
classes, have their own proprieties. The only value 
of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying 
the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 36 1 

the distinctive characteristics of another, — as English 
writers invariably measure us, and take upon them- 
selves to be disgusted accordingly, instead of trying 
l.o find out some principle of beauty with which we 
may be in conformity. 

In due time we were summoned to the table, and went 
thither in no solemn procession, but with a good deal of 
jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for places 
when we reached our destination. The legal gentle- 
men, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous 
zeal, which I never afterwards remarked in a similar 
party. The dining-hall was of noble size, and, like 
the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously painted 
and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a 
splendid table-service, and a noble array of footmen, 
some of them in plain clothes, and others wearing the 
town-livery, richly decorated with gold lace, and them- 
selves excellent specimens of the blooming young man- 
hood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was 
certainly an agreeable spectacle to look up and down 
the long vista of earnest faces, and behold them so 
resolute, so conscious that there was an important 
business in hand, and so determined to be equal to 
the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly 
know what can be prettier than a snow-white table- 
cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decoration, 
bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of 
Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artisti- 
cally folded napkin at each plate, all that airy portion 
of a banquet, in short, that comes before the first 
mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of artificial 
light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks 
spectral, and the simplest viands are the best. Printed 
bills-of-fare were distributed, representing an abundant 



362 OUR OLD HOME. 

feast, no part of which appeared on the table until 
called for in separate plates. I have entirely forgotten 
what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as 
there is a pervading commonplace and identicalness 
in the composition of extensive dinners, on account 
of the impossibility of supplying a hundred guests 
with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was 
suggested to me that certain juicy old gentlemen had 
a private understanding what to call for, and that it 
would be good policy in a stranger to follow in their 
footsteps through the feast. I did not care to do so, 
however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of 
Camacho's caldron, any sort of potluck at such a table 
would be sure to suit my purpose ; so I chose a dish 
or two on my own judgment, and, getting through my 
labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the Eng- 
lishmen toil onward to the end. 

They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely ; for 
I observed that they seldom took Hock, and let the 
Champagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, 
solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily 
before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste 
in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and cer- 
tainly was not so various, as that to which many 
Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate 
acquaintance with rare vintages does not suit a sensi- 
ble Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about 
his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long 
friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of 
a moment, and reaping the reward of his constancy in 
an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout as he 
deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the 
measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too 
often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 363 

imprudences of that kind, though, in my opinion, the 
Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their 
three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of 
their forefathers. It is not so very long since the 
three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It 
may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that 
there was an occult sympathy between our temperance 
reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost 
simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among 
the respectable classes in England. I remember a 
middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of 
the very slight importance attached to breaches of 
temperance within the memory of men not yet old) 
that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Link- 
water, or Drinkwater, — but I think the jolly old knight 
could hardly have staggered under so perverse a mis- 
nomer as this last, — while sitting on the magisterial 
bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk. 
" Mr. Clerk, 1 ' said Sir John, as if it were the most 
indifferent fact in the world, " I was drunk last night. 
There are my five shillings. 1 ' 

During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant 
conversation with the gentlemen on either side of 
me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great 
unction on the social standing of the judges. Repre- 
senting the dignity and authority of the Crown, they 
take precedence, during assize-time, of the highest 
military men in the kingdom, of the Lord-Lieutenant 
of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes, 
and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, 
they are the greatest men in England. With a glow 
of professional complacency that amounted to enthusi- 
asm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal 
dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would 



364 OUR OLD HOME. 

be expected to offer his arm and take the Queen her- 
self to the table. Happening to be in company with 
some of these elevated personages, on subsequent oc- 
casions, it appeared to me that the judges are fully 
conscious of their paramount claims to respect, and 
take rather more pains to impress them on their 
ceremonial inferiors than men of high hereditary rank 
are apt to do. Bishops, if it be not irreverent to say 
so, are sometimes marked by a similar characteristic. 
Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that 
he needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly 
incorporated with his nature from its original germ, in 
order to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively in the 
faces of innocent bystanders. 

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, 
middle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly 
where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly 
hewn visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed 
to hold within itself the machinery of a very terrific 
frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few 
opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened 
to be passing by. I was meditating in what way this 
grisly featured table-fellow might most safely be 
accosted, when he turned to me with a surly sort of 
kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We 
then began a conversation that abounded, on his part, 
with sturdy sense, and, somehow or other, brought 
me closer to him than I had yet stood to an English- 
man. I should hardly have taken him to be an edu- 
cated man, certainly not a scholar of accurate training; 
and yet he seemed to have all the resources of 
education and trained intellectual power at command. 
My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of 
English characteristics, appeared either to interest or 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 365 

amuse him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying 
influences of abundance of meat and drink, he grew 
very gracious, (not that I ought to use such a phrase 
to* describe his evidently genuine good-will,) and by 
and by expressed a wish for further acquaintance, 
asking me to call at his rooms in London and inquire 
for Sergeant Wilkins, — throwing out the name forc- 
ibly, as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I re- 
membered Dean Swift's retort to Sergeant Bettesworth 
on a similar announcement, — " Of what regiment, 
pray, Sir?" — and fancied that the same question 
might not have been quite amiss, if applied to the 
rugged individual at my side. But I heard of him 
subsequently as one of the prominent men at the 
English bar, a rough customer and a terribly strong 
champion in criminal cases ; and it caused me more 
regret than might have been expected, on so slight 
an acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw 
his death announced in the newspapers. Not rich in 
attractive qualities, he possessed, I think, the most 
attractive one of all, — thorough manhood. 

After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of 
decanters were set before the Mayor, who sent them 
forth on their outward voyage, full freighted with Port, 
Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors, 
methought, the latter found least acceptance among 
the guests. When every man had filled his glass, his 
Worship stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of 
course, " Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that 
effect ; and immediately a band of musicians, whose 
preliminary tootings and thrummings I had already 
heard behind me, struck up " God save the Queen," 
and the whole company rose with one impulse to 
assist in singing that famous national anthem. It was 



366 OUR OLD HOME. 

the first time in my life that I had ever seen a body 
of men, or even a single man, under the active in- 
fluence of the sentiment of Loyalty ; for, though we 
call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, 
and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and 
sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold 
and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring 
that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the 
Englishman's system, a force similar to that of our 
steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of 
human hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in 
flesh and blood, — at present, in the flesh and blood 
of a woman, — and manages to combine love, awe, and 
intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to em- 
body his mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea 
of kindred, in a single person, and make her the 
representative of his country and its laws. We Amer- 
icans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table ; 
and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titilla- 
tions of the heart in consequence of our proud 
prerogative of caring no more about our President 
than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow strad- 
dling in a cornfield. 

But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather 
ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle-aged and 
elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat and drink, 
their ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine, 
perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those 
strange old stanzas from the very bottom of their 
hearts and stomachs, which two organs, in the 
English interior arrangement, lie closer together 
than in ours. The song seemed to me the rudest 
old ditty in the world ; but I could not wonder at its 
universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 367 

considering how inimitably it expresses the national 
faith and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness 
of England, the Almighty's consequent respect and 
partiality for that redoubtable little island, and His 
presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against 
the contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other 
principalities or republics. Tennyson himself, though 
evidently English to the very last prejudice, could not 
write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding 
that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of 
every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak 
of a cart-wheel, and that the strain was not of such 
delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of them, 
I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling 
the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy 
to the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the 
largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, 
my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I 
purpose not to sing any more, unless it be " Hail 
Columbia" on the restoration of the Union) were 
poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The 
Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nut- 
cracker, and the other gentlemen in my neighborhood, 
by nods and gestures, evinced grave approbation of 
so suitable a tribute to English superiority ; and we 
finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy 
frame of mind. 

Other toasts followed in honor of the great institu- 
tions and interests of the country, and speeches in 
response to each were made by individuals whom the 
Mayor designated or the company called for. None 
of them impressed me with a very high idea of English 
postprandial oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, what 
ragged and shapeless utterances most Englishmen are 



368 OUR OLD HOME. 

satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything 
like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and 
another there, and ultimately getting out what they 
want to say, and generally with a result of sufficiently 
good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as if 
they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It 
seemed to me that this was almost as much by choice 
as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of public, 
favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, 
his countrymen distrust him. They dislike smart- 
ness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the 
better, provided there be an element of commonplace 
running through them ; and any rough, yet never 
vulgar force of expression, such as would knock an 
opponent down, if it hit him, only it must not be too 
personal, is altogether to their taste ; but a studied 
neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, 
they cannot abide. They do not often permit a man to 
make himself a fine orator of malice aforethought, that 
is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example, Lord 
Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary 
legislator and necessarily a public speaker, is bound 
to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best way he 
can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if 
I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely 
to applaud theirs as our own. When an English 
speaker sits down, you feel that you have been listen- 
ing to a real man, and not to an actor ; his senti- 
ments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, 
very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much an 
art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or 
elaborating a peroration. 

It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that 
nobody in England seems to feel any shyness about 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 369 

shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out 
of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, 
nobody did on the occasion now in hand, except a 
poor little Major of Artillery, who responded for the 
Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesitat- 
ing trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not, 
would rather have been bayoneted in front of his bat- 
teries than to have said a word. Not his own mouth, 
but the cannon's, was this poor Major's proper organ 
of utterance. 

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my 
fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another 
toast; and listening rather inattentively to the first 
sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in 
his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehen- 
sively towards Sergeant Wilkins. " Yes," grumbled 
that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port 
towards me, " it is your turn next " ; and seeing in 
my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly un- 
practised orator, he kindly added, — " It is nothing. 
A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. 
The less you say, the better they will like it." That 
being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would 
like it best if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant 
shook his head. Now, on first receiving the Mayor's 
invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might 
possibly be brought into my present predicament ; 
but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too 
disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so 
alien from my disposition and character that Fate 
surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for 
me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the 
crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need 
rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on 



370 OUR OLD HOME. 

inexorably, — and indeed, I heartily wished that he 
might get on and on forever, and of his wordy wan- 
derings find no end. 

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest 
confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my 
own experience as a public speaker quite as indif- 
ferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it 
does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, 
for it was not I, in my proper and natural self, that 
sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. At 
the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me 
whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head 
or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the 
latter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an 
idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, 
any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which 
to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning 
aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor 
vacuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed ; 
the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulo- 
gistic of the United States and highly complimen- 
tary to their distinguished representative at that table, 
to a close, amid avast deal of cheering ; and the band 
struck up " Hail Columbia," I believe, though it might 
have been " Old Hundred, 1 ' or " God save the Queen 11 
over again, for anything that I should have known or 
cared. When the music ceased, there was an in- 
tensely disagreeable instant, during which I seemed 
to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and 
rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural compo- 
sure, to make a speech. The guests rattled on the 
table, and cried, " Hear! " most vociferously, as if now, 
at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had 
come the long-expected moment when one golden 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 37 1 

word was to be spoken ; and in that imminent crisis, 
I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of inter- 
national sentiment, which it might, and must, and 
should do to utter. 

Well ; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. 
What surprised me most was the sound of my own 
voice, which I had never before heard at a declama- 
tory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to 
some other person, who, and not myself, would be 
responsible for the speech : a prodigious consolation 
and encouragement under the circumstances ! I went 
on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down 
amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything 
that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, 
methought, by the new development of pluck that 
alone had enabled me to speak at all. " It was hand- 
somely done ! " quoth Sergeant Wilkins ; and I felt 
like a recruit who had been for the first time under 
fire. 

I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then 
and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or 
worse position, and compelled to meet it as I best might ; 
for this was one of the necessities of an office which I 
had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath 
which I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on 
my own part, but could not shirk without cowardice 
and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. 
Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got 
a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a 
very pretty one, only I forgot every syllable at the 
moment of need, and had to improvise another as well 
as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange 
a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the 
occasion, and the kind aid of Providence, for enabling 



372 OUR OLD HOME. 

me to bring them to bear. The presence of any con- 
siderable proportion of personal friends generally 
dumfounded me. I would rather have talked with an 
enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was much em- 
barrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better 
with a large one, — the sympathy of a multitude pos- 
sessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a little 
way out of his individuality and tosses him towards a 
perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. 
Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an ex- 
pectation of going through the business entirely at my 
ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say ; 
whereas, if I came to the charge in perfect despair, and 
at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it 
once or twice happened that the frightful emergency 
concentrated my poor faculties, and enabled me to 
give definite and vigorous expression to sentiments 
which an instant before looked as vague and far off as 
the clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as 
my own success may have been, I apprehended that 
any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief 
requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many 
of the others, if he deems it worth while to bestow a 
great amount of labor and pains on an object which 
the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not 
found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. 
At any rate, it must be a remarkably true man who 
can keep his own elevated conception of truth when 
the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural 
sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best 
that there is in him, when by adulterating it a little, 
or a good deal, he knows that he may make it ten 
times as acceptable to the audience. 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 373 

This sHght article on the civic banquets of England 
would be too wretchedly imperfect without an attempted 
description of a Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion 
House in London. I should have preferred the an- 
nual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good fortune 
to witness it. Once, however, I was honored with an 
invitation to one of the regular dinners, and gladly 
accepted it, — taking the precaution, nevertheless, 
though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the 
City-King, through a mutual friend, that I was no 
fit representative of American eloquence, and must 
humbly make it a condition that I should not be 
expected to open my mouth, except for the reception 
of his Lordship's bountiful hospitality. The reply 
was gracious and acquiescent ; so that I presented 
myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion 
House, at half-past six o'clock, in a state of most en- 
joyable freedom from the pusillanimous apprehensions 
that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion 
House was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very 
heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its 
inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his 
traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. 
Times are changed, however, since the days of Whit- 
tington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, 
to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long 
integrity was a seat in the Lord Mayor's chair. 
People nowadays say that the real dignity and im- 
portance have perished out of the office, as they do, 
sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving 
only a painted and gilded shell like that of an Easter 
egg, and that it is only second-rate and third-rate 
men who now condescend to be ambitious of the 
Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this ; for the 



374 0UR 0LD home. 

original emigrants of New England had strong sym- 
pathies with the people of London, who were mostly 
Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, 
in the early days of our country ; so that the Lord 
Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the 
estimation of our forefathers, and held to be hardly 
second to the prime minister of the throne. The true 
great men of the city now appear to have aims be- 
yond city greatness, connecting themselves with 
national politics, and seeking to be identified with the 
aristocracy of the country. 

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of 
footmen dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff 
breeches, in which they looked wonderfully like 
American Revolutionary generals, only bedizened 
with far more lace and embroidery than those simple 
and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. 
There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom 
I should have taken to be military men of rank, being 
arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver epaulets ; but 
they turned out to be officers of the Lord Mayor's 
household, and were now employed in assigning to 
the guests the places which they were respectively to 
occupy' at the dinner-table. Our names (for I had 
included myself in a little group of friends) were 
announced ; and ascending the staircase, we met his 
Lordship in the doorway of the first reception-room, 
where, also, we had the advantage of a presentation to 
the Lady Mayoress. As this distinguished couple 
retired into private life at the termination of their 
year of office, it is inadmissible to make any remarks, 
critical or laudatory, on the manners and bearing of 
two personages suddenly emerging from a position 
of respectable mediocrity into one of preeminent 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 375 

dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals 
almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the 
full size of their office. If it were desirable to write 
an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people 
for grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own 
country, and on a scale incomparably greater than 
that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing 
like the outward magnificence that gilds and em- 
broiders the latter. If I have been correctly informed, 
the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly double that of the 
President of the United States, and yet is found very 
inadequate to his necessary expenditure. 

There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one 
by the opening of wide folding-doors ; and though 
in an old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, 
they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as 
well as spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and 
at either end a splendid fireplace of white marble, 
ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers and 
foliage. The company were about three hundred, 
many of them celebrities in politics, war, literature, 
and science, though I recollect none preeminently 
distinguished in either department. But it is cer- 
tainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of 
literature, for example, who deserve well of the public, 
yet do not often meet it face to face, thus to bring 
them together, under genial auspices, in connection 
with persons of note in other lines. I know not what 
may be the Lord Mayor's mode or principle of select- 
ing his guests, nor whether, during his official term, 
he can proffer his hospitality to every man of notice- 
able talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, 
whether his Lordship's invitation is much sought for 
or valued ; but it seemed to me that this periodical 



376 OUR OLD HOME. 

feast is one of the many sagacious methods which 
the English have contrived for keeping up a good 
understanding among different sorts of people. Like 
most other distinctions of society, however, I pre- 
sume that the Lord Mayor's card does not often seek 
out modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient 
is conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the honor. 

One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met 
with at any other public or partially public dinner, was 
the presence of ladies. No doubt, they were princi- 
pally the wives and daughters of city magnates ; and 
if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old 
plays and satirical poems, the city of London has 
always been famous for the beauty of its women and 
the reciprocal attractions between them and the men 
of quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither 
and thither through those crowded apartments, I saw 
much reason for modifying certain heterodox opinions 
which I had imbibed, in my Transatlantic newness 
and rawness, as regarded the delicate character and 
frequent occurrence of English beauty. To state the 
entire truth, (being, at this period, some years old in 
English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun 
to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other models 
of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to 
know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, 
if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of 
my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a 
certain meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call 
it scrawniness !) a deficiency of physical development, 
a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their mate- 
rial make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of 
voice, — all of which characteristics, nevertheless, only 
made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 377 

these fair creatures as angels, because I was some- 
times driven to a half-acknowledgment, that the Eng- 
lish ladies, looked at from a lower point of view, were 
perhaps a little finer animals than they. The advan- 
tages of the latter, if any they could really be said to 
have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of 
clay on their shoulders and other parts of their fig- 
ures. It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the 
ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange for 
half a hundred-weight of human clay ! 

At a given signal we all found our way into an 
immense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not 
why, except that the architecture was classic, and as 
different as possible from the ponderous style of Mem- 
phis and the Pyramids. A powerful band played in- 
spiringly as we entered, and a brilliant profusion of 
light shone down on two long tables, extending the 
whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between 
them, occupying nearly its entire breadth. Glass 
gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of 
snowy damask, over which were set out all the ac- 
companiments of a stately feast. We found our 
places without much difficulty, and the Lord Mayor's 
chaplain implored a blessing on the food, — a cere- 
mony which the English never omit, at a great din- 
ner or a small one, ye.t consider, I fear, not so much a 
religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish before the 
soup. 

The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, 
of which, in accordance with immemorial custom, 
each guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the 
otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, 
judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near 
me, I surmised that there was no practical limit, except 



378 OUR OLD HOME. 

the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup- 
tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I par- 
took of it but once, and then only in accordance with 
the wise maxim, always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a 
celebrated dish, at its indigenous site ; and the very 
fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the Lord 
Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox cus- 
toms which people follow for half a century without 
knowing why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very 
small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently well- 
brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to 
sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The 
rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of-fare printed 
on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of 
green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the 
English and French names of the numerous dishes, 
but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, 
which were all set on the table to be carved and dis- 
tributed by the guests. This ancient and honest 
method is attended with a good deal of trouble, and 
a lavish effusion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed 
or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby the 
absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your 
eyes, instead of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, 
and such meagre fulfilment as a single guest can con- 
trive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder that 
Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in 
the shape of butcherVmeat, do not generally better 
estimate the aesthetic gormandism of devouring the 
whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding 
to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after 
all, the most heroic appetite and widest stomachic 
capacity of mere mortals can enable even an alder- 
man really to eat. There fell to my lot three delecta- 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 379 

ble things enough, which I take pains to remember, 
that the reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied 
from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden him, 
— a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely 
stewed, and part of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same 
family as the grouse, but feeding high up towards the 
summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a 
wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the arti- 
ficially nurtured English game-fowl. All the other 
dainties have vanished from my memory as completely 
as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had clapped 
his wings over it. The band played at intervals, in- 
spiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling 
wines which the footmen supplied from an inexhaust- 
ible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with little 
apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there 
comes a to-morrow morning after every feast. As 
long as that shall be the case, a prudent man can 
never have full enjoyment of his dinner. 

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, 
sat a young lady in white, whom I am sorely tempted 
to describe, but dare not, because not only the super- 
eminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character, 
would cause the sketch to be recognized, however 
rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought that 
there existed such a woman outside of a picture- 
frame, or the covers of a romance : not that I had 
ever met with her resemblance even there, but, being 
so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed like- 
lier to find her sisterhood in poetry and picture than 
in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch 
too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft 
and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with a 
strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very 



380 OUR OLD HOME. 

spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and famil- 
iarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I re- 
member only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, 
and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you 
could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when 
he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. 
Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave 
hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrub- 
bery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman 
and lady were. Any child would have recognized 
them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife 
(the loveliest of the series, but with already a mys- 
terious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) 
travelling in their honeymoon, and dining, among 
other distinguished strangers, at the Lord Mayor's 
table. 

After an hour or two of valiant achievement with 
knife and fork came the dessert ; and at the point of 
the festival where finger-glasses are usually introduced 
a large silver basin was carried round to the guests, 
containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends 
of our napkins and were conscious of a delightful 
fragrance, instead of that heavy and weary odor, the 
hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems to be 
an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the 
Lord Mayor's table, but never met with westward of 
Temple Bar. 

During all the feast, in accordance with another 
ancient custom, the origin or purport of which I do 
not remember to have heard, there stood a man in 
armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lord- 
ship's chair. When the after-dinner wine was placed 
on the table, still another official personage appeared 
behind the chair, and proceeded to make a solemn 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 38 1 

and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enumerated 
the principal guests, comprising three or four noble- 
men, several baronets, and plenty of generals, members 
of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the il- 
lustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to 
my ears,) ending in some such style as this : " and 
other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord 
Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup," — giving a 
sort of sentimental twang to the two words, — " and 
sends it round among you ! " And forthwith the 
loving-cup — several of them, indeed, on each side of 
the tables — came slowly down with all the antique 
ceremony. 

The fashion of it is thus. The Lord Mayor, stand- 
ing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, 
presents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise 
rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to 
drink, which being successfully accomplished, the 
guest replaces the cover and receives the cup into his 
own hands. He then presents it to his next neigh- 
bor, that the cover may be again removed for himself 
to take a draught, after which the third person goes 
through a similar manoeuvre with a fourth, and he 
with a fifth, until the whole company find themselves 
inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one compli- 
cated chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, 
I examined it critically, both inside and out, and per- 
ceived it to be an antique and richly ornamented 
silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine. 
Considering how much trouble we all expended in 
getting the cup to our lips, the guests appeared to 
content themselves with wonderfully moderate pota- 
tions. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of 
wine being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful 



382 OUR OLD HOME. 

whether any of the company had more than barely 
touched the silver rim before passing it to their 
neighbors, — a degree of abstinence that might be 
accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many 
compotators in one cup, or possibly by a disapproba- 
tion of the liquor. Being curious to know all about 
these important matters, with a view of recommend- 
ing to my countrymen whatever they might usefully 
adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup, and 
had no occasion for another, — ascertaining it to be 
Claret of a poor original quality, largely mingled 
with water, and spiced and sweetened. It was good 
enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial 
drink, and could never have been intended for any 
better purpose. 

The toasts now began in the customary order, 
attended with speeches neither more nor less witty 
and ingenious than the specimens of table eloquence 
which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory 
to each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, 
behind the chair of state, gave awful notice that the 
Right Honorable the Lord Mayor was about to pro- 
pose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered 
thereof, together with some accompanying remarks, 
the band played an appropriate tune, and the herald 
again issued proclamation to the effect that such or 
such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified 
clergyman, or what not, was going to respond to the 
Right Honorable the Lord Mayor's toast ; then, if I 
mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of 
trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments ; and 
finally the doomed individual, waiting all this while to 
be decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool 
of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 383 

oratory on the good citizens of London, and having 
evidently got every word by heart, (even including, 
however he managed it, the most seemingly casual 
improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a 
book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech 
I ever heard in England. 

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on 
this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed 
me as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why 
should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits 
into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards 
mellow themselves into a most enjoyable state of 
quietude with copious libations of Sherry and old 
Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by 
listening to speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, 
and in no degree so refreshing ? If the Champagne 
had thrown its sparkle over the surface of these 
effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through 
their substance with a ruddy glow of the old English 
humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentle- 
men prattling in their cups, and should undoubtedly 
have been glad to be a listener. But there was no 
attempt nor impulse of the kind on the part of the 
orators, nor apparent expectation of such a phenom- 
enon on that of the audience. In fact, I imagine that 
the latter were best pleased when the speaker embod- 
ied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or 
struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics, 
as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid- 
ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, 
of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable 
change, I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly 
institution of civic banquets. People used to come to 
them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being 



384 OUR OLD HOME. 

jolly ; they come now with an odd notion of pouring 
sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood- 
bitters and thus make such a mess of it that the wine 
and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another. 

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a 
spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened 
about this stage of the feast, and very much inter- 
rupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this 
time, my condition had been exceedingly felicitous, 
both on account of the brilliancy of the scene, and 
because I was in close proximity with three very 
pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, 
whose honored name my readers would recognize as a 
household word, if I dared write it ; another, a gentle- 
man, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, 
kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom 
mixed in such happy proportion as in him. The 
third was the man to whom I owed most in England, 
the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary 
of doing me good, who led me to many scenes of life, 
in town, camp, and country, which I never could have 
found out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of 
help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he 
had not had a thousand more important things to live 
for. Thus I never felt safer or cosier at anybody's 
fireside, even my own, than at the dinner-table of the 
Lord Mayor. 

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His 
Lordship got up and proceeded to make some very 
eulogistic remarks upon " the literary and commercial " 
— I question whether those two adjectives were ever 
before married by a copulative conjunction, and they 
certainly would not live together in illicit intercourse, 
of their own accord — " the literary and commercial 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 385 

attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," 
and then went on to speak of the relations of blood 
and interest between Great Britain and the aforesaid 
eminent gentleman's native country. Those bonds 
were more intimate than had ever before existed be- 
tween two great nations, throughout all history, and his 
Lordship felt assured that that whole honorable com- 
pany would join him in the expression of a fervent wish 
that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both 
sides of the Atlantic, now and forever. Then came 
the same wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew 
upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text 
of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The 
herald sonorously announced that Mr. So-and-so would 
now respond to his Right Honorable Lordship's 
toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the custom- 
ary flourish for the onset, there was a thunderous 
rumble of anticipatory applause, and finally a deep 
silence sank upon the festive hall. 

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord 
Mayor's part, after beguiling me within his lines on 
a pledge of safe-conduct ; and it seemed very strange 
that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his 
dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion 
House wine, and go away grateful at heart for the old 
English hospitality. If his Lordship had sent me an 
infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have 
taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I sup- 
pose the secret of the matter to have been somewhat 
as follows. 

All England, just then, was in one of those singular 
fits of panic excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive 
and tremulous as that emotion,) which, in consequence 
of the homogeneous character of the people, their in- 



386 OUR OLD HOME. 

tense patriotism and their dependence for their ideas 
in public affairs on other sources than their own ex- 
amination and individual thought, are more sudden, 
pervasive, and unreasoning than any similar mood of 
our own public. In truth, I have never seen the 
American public in a state at all similar, and believe 
that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not 
impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong, are moral 
and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the 
North, at the commencement of this war, bore the 
aspect of impulse and passion only because it was so 
universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just as 
the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand 
people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that 
might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, 
and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool 
to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may 
be. There is nothing which the English find it so 
difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. They 
imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind of wild 
beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are 
always looking for the moment when we shall break 
through the slender barriers of international law and 
comity, and compel the reasonable part of the world, 
with themselves at the head, to combine for the pur- 
pose of putting us into a stronger cage. At times 
this apprehension becomes so powerful, (and when 
one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles the 
passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where 
you see the whole crop bending and swaying beneath 
one impulse, and each separate stalk tossing with the 
self-same disturbance as its myriad companions. At 
such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible iden- 
tity of sentiment and expression. You have the whole 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 387 

country in each man ; and not one of them all, if you 
put him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable 
ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in 
the world — our own country and France — that can 
put England into this singular state. It is the united 
sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful of 
their country's honor, most anxious for the preservation 
of the cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they 
have been so long in consolidating, and incompetent 
(owing to the national half-sigh tedness, and their 
habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their 
public opinion) to judge when that prosperity is 
really threatened. 

If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign 
side of any international dispute, they might easily have 
satisfied themselves that there was very little danger of 
a war at that particular crisis, from the simple circum- 
stance that their own Government had positively not 
an inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not 
fail to be aware of the fact. Neither could they have 
met Parliament with any show of a justification for 
incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as 
exists now, when law and right are really controverted 
on sustainable or plausible grounds, and a naval com- 
mander may at any moment fire off the first cannon of 
a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was 
a mere diplomatic squabble, in which the British minis- 
ters, with the politic generosity which they are in the 
habit of showing towards their official subordinates, 
had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining 
an ambassador in an indefensible proceeding ; and 
the American Government (for God had not denied us 
an administration of Statesmen then) had retaliated 
with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevi- 



388 OUR OLD HOME. 

tably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but 
indulging them with no pretence whatever for active 
resentment. 

Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishman, 
probably fancied that War was on the western gale, 
and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an 
American as myself, who might be made to harp on 
the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity 
of blood and interest, and community of language and 
literature, and whisper peace where there was no peace, 
in however weak an utterance. And possibly his Lord- 
ship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling 
which was sure to be expressed by a company of well- 
bred Englishmen, at his august and far-famed dinner- 
table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand 
result. Thus, when the Lord Mayor invited me to his 
feast, it was a piece of strategy. He wanted to induce 
me to fling myself, like a lesser Curtius, with a larger 
object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of discord be- 
tween England and America, and, on my ignominious 
demur, had resolved to shove me in with his own 
right-honorable hands, in the hope of closing up the 
horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his 
Lordship. He meant well by all parties, — himself, 
who would share the glory, and me, who ought to 
have desired nothing better than such an heroic 
opportunity, - — his own country, which would con- 
tinue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, which 
would get everything that men work with and wear. 

As soon as the Lord Mayor began to speak, I rapped 
upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow sound, being 
absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never thought 
of listening to the speech, because I knew it all before- 
hand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was 



CIVIL BANQUETS. 389 

aware that it would not offer a single suggestive point. 
In this dilemma, I turned to one of my three friends, 
;a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow 
of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he 
deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought 
or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to 
my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder ashore 
again. He advised me to begin with some remarks 
complimentary to the Lord Mayor, and expressive of 
the hereditary reverence in which his office was held 
— at least, my friend thought that there would be no 
harm in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, 
whether quite the fact or no — was held by the 
descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if 
I liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own elo- 
quence, I might easily slide off into the momentous 
subject of the relations between England and Amer- 
ica, to which his Lordship had made such weighty 
allusion. 

Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and 
bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got 
upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the 
attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, 
and suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never 
happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and 
peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to 
close these Sketches, leaving myself still erect in so 
heroic an attitude. 



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